INTERNATIONAL 

CONGREGATIONAL 

COUNCIL 

1920 

Advance  Report  Number  Six 
American  Section 

The  Missionary  History 
of  Congregationalism’ 


THE  NATIONAL  COUNCIL  OF 
CONGREGATIONAL  CHURCHES 

289  FOURTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 


MEMBERS  OF  THE  COMMISSION  ON  CONGREGATIONALISM 

AND  MISSIONS 


Sanders,  Rev.  Frank  K.,  D.D.,  Chairman,  New  York  City. 

Director  of  the  Board  of  Missionary  Preparation. 

Baird,  Rev.  Lucius  O.,  D.D.,  Seattle,  Wash. 

Superintendent  of  the  Washington  Congregational  Conference. 

Beach,  Rev.  Harlan  P.,  D.D.,  New  Haven,  Conn. 

Professor  of  Missions  in  the  Yale  Divinity  School. 

Browne,  Rev.  J.  K.,  San  Francisco,  Cal. 

Assistant  Secretary  of  the  American  Board  for  the  Pacific  Coast. 

Capen,  Prof.  Edward  W.,  Ph.D.,  Hartford,  Conn. 

Dean  of  the  Kennedy  School  of  Missions. 

Choate,  Miss  Miriam  F.,  New  York  City. 

General  Secretary  of  the  Congregational  Woman's  Home  Missionary  Federation. 

Emrich,  Rev.  F.  E.,  D.D.,  Boston,  Mass. 

Secretary  of  the  Massachusetts  Home  Missionary  Society. 

Eversz,  Rev.  Moritz  E.,  D.D.,  Chicago,  Ill. 

Superintendent  of  the  German  Department,  Congregational  Home  Missionary  Society. 

Hume,  Rev.  Robert  E.,  Ph.D.,  New  York  City. 

Professor  of  the  History  of  Religions,  Union  Theological  Seminary. 

Lee,  Mrs.  Lucius  O.,  Chicago,  Ill. 

Secretary  of  the  Woman’s  Board  of  Missions  of  the  Interior. 

Miner,  Rev.  Henry  A.,  D.D.,  Madison,  Wis. 

Secretary  Emeritus  of  the  Wisconsin  Congregational  Association. 

Miskovsky,  Prof.  Louis  F.,  A.M.,  Oberlin,  Ohio. 

Principal  of  the  Slavic  Department  of  the  Oberlin  Graduate  School  of  Theology. 

Phillips,  Rev.  W.  L.,  D.D.,  Shelton,  Conn. 

Member  of  the  Executive  Committee  of  the  Congregational  Home  Missionary  Society. 

Richards,  Rev.  Charles  H.,  D.D.,  New  York  City. 

Church  Building  Secretary  of  the  Congregational  Church  Building  Society. 

Smith,  Rev.  Arthur  H.,  D.D.,  Tunghsien,  Chihli,  China. 

Missionary  of  the  American  Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions. 

Strong,  Rev.  William  E.,  D.D.,  Boston,  Mass. 

Editorial  Secretary,  American  Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions. 

Tucker,  Rev.  John  T.,  B.D.,  Toronto,  Canada. 

Principal  of  the  Dondi  Institute,  West  Central  Africa. 

Warner,  Dr.  Lucien  C.,  New  York  City. 

Chairman  of  the  Congregational  World  Movement. 


THE  MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 

IN  NORTH  AMERICA 

With  an  Outline  of 

Its  Responsibilities  and  the  Policy  and  Program  Needed 

I 

Its  Historical  Roots 

The  missionary  spirit  is  native  to  Congregationalism.  Throughout 
three  centuries  of  active  history  our  free  people  have  given  nobly  of  their 
energy  and  resources  that  a  real  gospel  might  be  preached  to  a  world  in 
need.  Their  emphasis  on  religious  freedom,  their  obedience  to  the  call  of 
conscience,  their  sense  of  Christian  fellowship,  their  confidence  in  Divine 
leadership  —  these  have  made  New  England,  the  first  free  home  of  Pilgrims 
and  Puritans,  a  natural  motherland  of  missionary  endeavor. 

At  the  very  outset  of  New  England  history  the  early  settlers  gave  ex¬ 
pression  to  their  missionary  spirit.  John  Robinson,  the  revered  pastor  in 
Holland  of  the  Plymouth  colonists,  having  heard  of  a  skirmish  between 
the  fiery  Standish  and  a  band  of  Indians,  wrote  to  Governor  Bradford, 
“  Oh,  that  you  had  converted  some  before  you  had  killed  any.”  The  great 
seal  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Company  in  1628,  with  its  emblematic 
Indian  whose  extended  hands  seemed  to  say  “  Come  over  and  help  us,” 
attested  a  real  desire  to  secure  “  the  glory  of  God  and  the  everlasting 
welfare  of  the  poore  naked  sonnes  of  Adam.”1  Matthew  Cradock,  the 
governor  of  the  Massachusetts  Company  in  England,  in  his  instructions  to 
Governor  Endicott  and  the  Council  in  Boston,  was  careful  to  declare  that 
they  had  made  “  plentiful  provision  of  godly  ministers  by  whom  .  .  .  also 
the  Indians  may  in  God’s  appointed  time  be  reduced  to  the  obedience  of 
the  Gospel  of  Christ.”  The  first  three  ministers,  the  Reverends  Samuel 
Skelton,  Francis  Higginson  and  Francis  Bright,  were  bound  by  their 
written  contracts  in  April,  1629,  “  to  do  their  endeavor  ”  with  the  Com¬ 
pany’s  people  and  with  the  Indians  to  “  further  the  main  end  of  the  Planta¬ 
tion  .  .  .  the  conversion  of  the  savages.”2  Their  idea,  at  first,  was  to  pre¬ 
pare  the  Indians  for  Christianity  by  acquainting  them  with  Christian 
civilization.  Squanto  and  Hobomok  are  only  the  best  known  of  many 
Indians  who  were  encouraged  to  frequent  the  settlements.  The  Pequot 
uprising  of  1637,  so  summarily  repressed,  gave  colonists  and  savages  alike 
a  greater  mutual  respect  and  understanding.  Before  1644,  responsible 
leaders  began  to  “  lay  to  heart  ”  an  active  ministry  to  their  red  neighbors. 
The  General  Court  in  November  of  that  year,  in  view  of  the  prevailing 
comfort  and  repose,  empowered  subordinate  courts  “  to  take  order  to  have 
them  (the  Indians)  instructed  in  the  knowledge  and  worship  of  God.”3 
Two  years  later  the  General  Court  formally  provided  for  sending  two 
ministers  each  year  “  to  make  known  the  heavenly  counsel  of  God  among 
the  Indians.”3  It  thus  became  the  first  missionary  organization  in  Prot¬ 
estant  Christendom. 

But  men  were  not  wanting  among  the  Fathers  to  give  an  independent 
response  to  the  call  of  need.  In  October,  1646,  the  Reverend  John  Eliot, 
then  forty-two  years  of  age,  a  distinguished  graduate  in  arts  of  Cambridge, 
a  colonist  of  outstanding  ability  and  influence,  who  had  been  for  fourteen 
years  the  learned  and  godly  pastor  of  the  church  at  Roxbury,  having  pre- 

1  Bartlett,  Sketches  of  the  Missions  of  the  American  Board,  p.  1. 

2  Young,  Chronicles  of  the  First  Planters  of  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay ,  142,  211. 

3  Palfrey,  History  of  New  England,  ii,  188-9. 

3 


4 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


pared  himself  to  preach  in  the  Indian  tongue,  delivered  a  sermon  in  the 
wigwam  of  a  neighboring  chieftain.  For  over  forty  years  he  eagerly  de¬ 
voted  a  portion  of  his  time  to  the  evangelization  and  training  of  the  Indians 
of  his  vicinity.  He  lived  a  life  of  trial,  self-denial  and  the  brave  meeting 
of  opposition  from  friends  and  foes  alike  which  gave  him  a  conspicuous 
place  in  the  missionary  history  of  the  first  century  of  occupation.4  Eliot 
not  only  rendered  the  Scriptures  into  the  dialect  of  his  Indians,  but  or¬ 
ganized  model  communities,  set  up  schools,  trained  teachers  and  ministers 
from  among  the  Indians.  He  evangelized  from  Cape  Cod  to  Worcester 
County  and  in  1675  could  enumerate  sixteen  “praying  towns  ”  containing 
some  1,100  Indians. 

There  were  others  no  less  devoted.  In  1650  the  Connecticut  Colony 
made  a  modest  appropriation  for  the  religious  instruction  of  the  Indians, 
and  the  Reverend  Abraham  Pierson  of  Connecticut  (father  of  Rector  Pier¬ 
son  of  Yale)  studied  the  Indian  tongue  in  order  to  be  able  to  preach  to  the 
tribesmen.  Thomas  Mayhew  of  Martha’s  Vineyard  in  1644  began  a  work 
for  the  aborigines  which  was  carried  on  for  five  generations  from  father  to 
son  until  1803,  a  devotedness  unrivalled  by  even  the  Jesuit  fathers. 
Thomas  Tupper  founded  a  church  on  Herring  River  and  Richard  Bourne 
a  mission  at  Mashpee,  which  were  continued  by  their  families.  More¬ 
over  the  very  foremost  colonists,  such  as  President  Dunster  of  Harvard 
College  and  Superintendent  Daniel  Gookin,  who  was  in  official  yet  friendly 
charge  of  the  Indians  of  Massachusetts  from  1656  to  1687,  and  many 
earnest  pastors,  such  as  Thomas  Fitch  of  Norwich  or  Seaborn  and  John 
Cotton,  sons  of  the  Rev.  John  Cotton,  the  first  teaching  pastor  of  the  First 
Church  of  Boston,  were  sincerely  zealous  in  the  work  of  encouraging  and 
supporting  these  leaders.5 

Quaintly  titled  reports,  such  as  “  New  England’s  First  Fruits  ”  (1643), 
“  The  Day  Breaking  if  not  the  Sun  Rising  of  the  Gospell  with  the  Indians  ” 
(1647),  or  “  Strength  out  of  Weakness  ”  (1652),  brought  the  fruitage  of 
these  efforts  to  the  mother  country,  kindling  a  sympathetic  zeal  in  the 
hearts  of  many.  In  July,  1649,  through  the  personal  influence  of  Crom¬ 
well,  who  had  been  stirred  by  the  eloquence  of  Edward  Winslow, ‘Parlia¬ 
ment  chartered  a  Corporation  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in  New 
England,  authorized  to  raise  money  to  be  expended  “  in  such  manner  as 
shall  best  and  principally  conduce  to  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ  among  the  natives  and  for  maintaining  of  schools  for  the  better 
education  of  the  children  of  the  natives.”  Thus  was  born  out  of  New 
England  the  pioneer  among  all  Protestant  missionary  societies.6  Through 
its  timely  aid  many  a  village  pastor  was  enabled  to  devote  a  portion  of  his 
time  and  strength  to  Indian  evangelization,  and  Eliot’s  Indian  Bible, 
printed  at  Cambridge  between  1661  and  1664,  was  made  possible.7  At 
the  Restoration  in  1661,  when  tempted  to  declare  the  corporation  illegal 
and  to  confiscate  its  £11,000  of  invested  funds,  Charles  II,  swayed  by 
Robert  Boyle  through  Lord  Clarendon,  rechartered  the  Society  as  the 
“  Corporation  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  amongst  the  Heathen 
Nations  of  New  England  and  the  Parts  Adjacent  in  North  America.” 
Boyle,  for  many  years  its  president,  maintained  a  discriminating  cor¬ 
respondence  with  Eliot  and  others  which  exhibits  his  sanity  and  zeal. 
The  endowments  of  this  Society,8  administered  by  the  Church  Missionary 
Society,  still  maintain  a  work  for  North  American  Indians.9 

4  Moore,  Memoir  of  Eliot. 

5  Ellis,  The  Red  Man  and  the  While  Man ;  Mathews,  The  Expansion  of  New  England. 

6  Humphreys,  Historical  Account  of  the  Incorporated  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel.  Quoted  in  Records  of  the  Society  for  Propagating  the  Gospel  among  the  Indians  and 
Others  of  North  America ,  p.  6. 

7  The  New  Testament  appeared  in  1661;  the  Old  Testament  in  1664.  A  second  edition 
was  issued  by  1685. 

8  Often  referred  to  as  “  The  New  England  Company.” 

8  History  Church  Missionary  Society,  i,  21. 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


5 


For  a  generation  a  community  evangelization  of  the  Indians  was  carried 
on  with  considerable  success.  The  innate  savagery  of  the  Indians,  their 
roving  habits  and  disinclination  to  habitual  activity,  most  of  all  their 
slavery  to  the  intoxicants  which  seemed  normal  beverages  to  their  white 
neighbors,  were  great  hindrances  to  the  development  of  Christian  institu¬ 
tions  among  them.  Yet  in  1675  there  is  good  evidence  of  the  existence 
of  not  less  than  4,000  “  praying  Indians,”  who  had  met.with  sincerity  every 
reasonable  religious  test  and  were  persistently  faithful  to  their  principles. 
Even  as  late  as  1687,  President  Increase  Mather  of  Harvard  declared  in  a 
letter  to  Professor  Leusden  of  Utrecht  that  there  were  six  churches  of  bap¬ 
tized  Indians,  eighteen  assemblies  of  professing  catachumens  and  twenty- 
four  Indian  preachers. 

From  King  Philip’s  War  in  1675  to  the  peace  of  Utrecht  in  1714,  came 
a  period  of  almost  continuous,  deadly  struggles  with  bitter  experiences  of 
treachery,  violence  and  spoliation,  which  developed  in  colonists  and  Indians 
alike  an  unreasoning  distrust  or  a  relentless  hatred.  It  naturally  made 
havoc  of  much  of  this  work  of  evangelization.  Moreover,  the  solicitude  of 
the  colonists  regarding  their  independence  and  the  hardships  which  they 
had  to  bear  could  not  fail  to  dull  their  ardor  for  religious  tasks.  The 
technical  rigor  with  which  the  tests  of  fitness  for  church  membership  were 
applied  had  its  effect  in  formalizing  and  deadening  the  life  of  the  churches. 
Although  a  colony  under  Rev.  Joseph  Lord  had  settled  in  1696  at  Dorches¬ 
ter10  in  Carolina,  in  response  to  the  appeal  of  fellow  Puritans  there  for  help 
in  “  establishing  the  ordinances  of  the  gospel,”  and  although  Cotton 
Mather  in  1710  had  pleaded  with  his  people  to  “  emulate  the  Jesuits, 
Danes  and  Dutch  in  propagating  the  old  and  glorious  religion  of  Christ,” 
yet  the  aggressiveness  of  the  churches  declined  until  there  had  developed 
a  “  widespread  shadow  of  depression  and  discouragement.”  In  all  New 
England  in  1700  there  were  about  120  organized  churches;  at  least  110 
were  Congregational.11  In  1701  William  III,  at  the  instance  of  English 
prelates,  had  chartered  the  well-known  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel  in  Foreign  Parts,  which  began  a  work  in  1702  among  the  negroes 
and  Indians  of  North  America.  This  Society,  however,  had  little  in  com¬ 
mon  with  the  free  churches. 


II 

The  Great  Awakening  of  1735-1742 

The  quarter  century  following  the  Peace  of  Utrecht  was  a  time  of  rapid 
extension  and  quickening  life  for  the  colonists.  The  real  New  England, 
which  set  its  stamp  upon  our  nation,  began  to  come  into  being.  While 
Harvard  and  Yale  had  shared  in  the  prevailing  formalism  of  the  years 
preceding,  they  had  not  failed  to  develop  men  of  leadership  for  the  hour. 
For  more  than  fifty  years  in  the  frontier  parish  of  Northampton  the  Rev. 
Solomon  Stoddard,  a  Harvard  graduate,  distinguished  for  his  devoutness 
and  ability,  had  maintained  a  fruitful  ministry.  In  his  pulpit  his  famous 
grandson,  Jonathan  Edwards,  a  graduate  of  Yale,  one  of  the  most  impres¬ 
sive  figures  in  the  religious  history  of  America,  preached  righteousness 
with  such  originality,  conviction  and  power  that  the  winter  of  1734-5 
initiated  in  his  community  a  religious  revival  so  real  and  sweeping  that 
Edwards’  “  Narrative  ”  regarding  it  stirred  all  New  England  and  the 
colonies  and  eventually  the  mother  country,  giving  form  to  ideas  which 

10  This  colony  prospered  greatly.  It  founded  a  Congregational  church,  which,  on  its 
removal  along  with  the  bulk  of  the  Puritan  community  about  half  a  century  later  to  Sun- 
bury,  Ga.,  became  known  as  the  “  Midway  ”  Congregational  church.  This  church  and 
the  old  “  Circular  ”  Congregational  church  of  Charleston,  organized  in  1680,  reared  a 
strong  group  of  southern  Christian  leaders..  The  Midway  church  ceased  to  exist  in  1865; 
the  Circular  church  is  still  active. 

11  Platner,  Religious  History  of  New  England,  p.  55. 


6 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


had  been  stirring  in  the  fertile  mind  of  John  Wesley.12  This  revival  died 
down  after  a  year,  but  was  reawakened  by  the  fervidly  eloquent  and  stir¬ 
ring  preaching  of  Whitefield  among  the  colonies  in  1740-41.  This  great 
evangelist  became,  rightly  or  otherwise,  a  critic  of  the  New  England 
churches  and  pastors,  and  was  eventually  discredited  by  them;  yet  the 
whole  movement  had  two  significant  results:  it  mellowed  New  England 
theological  thinking  and  it  quickened  into  new  life  the  moral  and  spiritual 
idealism  of  New  England,  exalting  the  moral  tone  of  each  community,  de¬ 
veloping  a  hopeful  and  inspiring  faith  in  Divine  providence,  kindling  finer 
human  interests,  more  tolerance  and  liberty,  and  arousing  afresh  that  sense 
of  responsibility  to  God  and  to  humankind  which  stirs  missionary  zeal  * 
and  sustains  it.  Among  the  other  natural  motives  which  led  to  the  char¬ 
tering  in  1746  of  the  College  of  New  Jersey  as  the  third  college  to  minister 
to  the  needs  of  the  Northeastern  colonies  may  be  reckoned  the  desire  for 
an  atmosphere  of  greater  intellectual  and  spiritual  freedom  than  the  Har¬ 
vard  or  the  Yale  of  that  day  permitted.  Early  steps  toward  its  organiza¬ 
tion  were  taken  in  the  presbytery  of  Newark,  a  settlement  from  Connecticut 
and  virtually  Congregational.  The  sponsors  of  the  ten-year-old  college 
welcomed  Edwards  to  the  presidency  and  the  teaching  of  divinity  in  1757. 

Such  an  awakening  of  spiritual  life  could  not  fail  to  arouse  the  conscience 
of  New  England  in  regard  to  the  few  Indians  now  remaining,  long  since 
shorn. of  dangerous  power,  and  to  the  tribes  at  a  distance.  In  1743  work 
was  being  carried  on  with  some  success  in  Rhode  Island  under  the  auspices 
of  the  “  New  England  Company.”  Many  conversions  were  reported  at 
Westerly.  On  Long  Island  a  Mr.  Horton,  at  Stockbridge,  Mass.,  John 
Sergeant,  and  at  Sharon,  Conn,  and  elsewhere  the  Moravian  missionaries 
were  actively  promoting  evangelization.  From  1743  to  1747,  David 
Brainerd,  forced  to  give  up  his  student  career  at  Yale,  gave  himself  with 
determined  zeal  as  a  missionary  of  the  Honorable  Society  in  Scotland  for 
Promoting  Christian  Knowledge  (founded  in  1709)  to  “  gospellizing  the 
heathen  Indians  ”  of  western  Massachusetts  and  Pennsylvania.  Despite 
two  flattering  calls  from  attractive  parishes  he  persisted  in  this  self-denying 
task  until  seized  by  consumption.  He  died  a  member  of  Edwards’  family 
in  1747,  less  than  thirty  years  of  age.  The  story  of  his  devoted  life,  based 
upon  his  journal  and  interpreted  by  Edwards,  wielded  a  potent  influence 
over  the  world  of  that  day.13  William  Carey,  Samuel  Marsden  and  Henry 
Martyn  with  a  host  of  others  in  England  and  the  colonies  were  the  direct 
fruitage  of  that  simple  record  of  self-denying,  Christlike  heroism.  When 
Jonathan  Edwards  in  1751  was  forced  to  leave  his  Northampton  parish, 
he  was  then  ready  to  give  a  part  of  his  strength  in  service  for  the  Stock- 
bridge  Indians  as  a  missionary  representing  the  Massachusetts  Commis¬ 
sioners  for  Indian  Affairs  and  the  Society  in  London.  Meanwhile  at 
Lebanon  (now  Columbia),  Conn.,  a  worthy  enterprise  had  been  developing 
since  1744,  under  the  leadership  of  Eleazer  Wheelock,  the  local  pastor. 
He  had  interested  himself  for  ten  years  in  the  training  for  missionary  service 
of  a  few  promising  lads,  both  Indians  and  white  boys,  among  them  Samson 
Occum,  who  had  been  converted  in  the  Awakening  in  1745,  and  Samuel 
Kirkland,  who  became  a  famous  missionary  to  the  Oneidas.  In  1754,  a 
local  associate,  Joshua  Moor,  willed  a  house  and  two  acres  in  Lebanon  for 
the  uses  of  the  school,  which  was  in  consequence  called  the  Moor’s  Indian 
Charity  School.  The  countryside  subscribed  £500  for  the  school.  Begin¬ 
ning  in  1754  with  two  pupils,  in  1762  there  were  twenty.  Occum  became  a 
successful  evangelist  to  the  Indians.  In  1766  Occum  and  Nathaniel  Whit¬ 
taker  went  to  England  to  secure  funds  for  the  enlargement  of  the  school. 
Dr.  Wheelock’s  friendship  with  Whitefield  led  the  latter  to  exert  himself  on 
behalf  of  the  two  solicitors.  They  collected  some  £9000,  duly  acknowl- 

12  Allen,  Jonathan  Edwards,  p.  134. 

13  Ibid.,  p.  247.  Allen  thinks  that  Edwards  contributed  distinctive  elements. 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


7 


edged  in  1768  by  the  General  Assembly  of  Connecticut  “in  support  of  Dr. 
Wheelock’s  Indian  Academy  for  the  Promotion  of  Christianity  and  Civility 
among  the  Savage  Indians  on  this  Continent.”  Wishing  a  new  location 
and  an  incorporation,  Dr.  Wheelock  secured  in  1769  the  charter  of  Dart¬ 
mouth  College,  named  for  the  Earl  of  Dartmouth,  the  active  patron  of  the 
enterprise  in  England.  The  college  was  established  at  Hanover,  N.  H., 
in  association  with  the  school  which  was  moved  thither,  and  with  the  same 
purpose  of  the  evangelization  of  the  Indians  by  the  training  of  missionaries 
to  them  and  by  the  education  of  Indian  boys.  In  1771  out  of  fifty  stu¬ 
dents  nine  were  Indians.  Thus  Dartmouth,  like  Princeton,  was  indirectly 
at  least  a  fruitage  of  the  revival  movements.14 

Meanwhile  in  1762  a  group  of  gentlemen  in  Massachusetts  had  organized 
a  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  Christian  Knowledge  among  the  Indians 
of  North  America,  raised  a  substantial  fund,  obtained  a  colonial  charter 
and  planned  an  enterprising  work.  This  organization  would  have  been 
the  first  missionary  society  in  New  England,  had  not  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  persuaded  His  Majesty  to  negative  the  act  of  incorporation, 
fearing  lest  the  new  society  should  interfere  with  the  established  Society 
in  London  and  become  a  non-episcopal  channel  of  influence.15  This  interest 
taken  in  New  England  in  the  Indians  was  paralleled  by  a  concern  for 
African  slaves,  who  had  for  upwards  of  a  century  been  found  among  the 
colonists.  Dr.  Samuel  Hopkins  of  Newport  was  not  only  a  great  theolo¬ 
gian  but  a  brave  opponent  of  slavery,  converting  his  own  church  about 
1772,  and  the  whole  state  of  Rhode  Island  by  1784,  to  a  policy  of  manu¬ 
mission.  He  planned  with  Dr.  Ezra  Stiles  (later  president  of  Yale)  to 
educate  two  promising  Africans  and  to  send  them  back  to  their  native 
land  as  missionaries.  The  Revolutionary  War  drove  Dr.  Hopkins  and 
his  church  from  their  homes  and  the  negroes  from  their  studies.  Nor 
was  this  missionary  interest  confined  to  those  regarded  as  heathen.  From 
1714,  when  Massachusetts  in  a  friendly  rectification  of  boundaries  gave 
Connecticut  60,000  acres  of  her  “  western  lands,”  a  tract  lying  north  of  the 
Berkshires,  until  Vermont  attained  statehood  in  1777,  that  region  was 
peopled  by  settlers  who  came  principally  from  Connecticut.  Just  as 
Cotton  Mather,  about  1720,  led  the  Boston  churches  to  send  out  preachers 
to  care  for  the  “  shepherdless  ”  people  of  the  “  wilderness  ”  [Worcester 
Co.],  so  the  General  Association  of  Connecticut  was  not  unmindful  of  its 
responsibilities.  In  June,  1774,  it  voted  to  raise  funds  to  send  missionaries 
to  “  Ye  settlements  now  forming  in  the  wilderness  to  the  westward  and 
northwestward  [New  York  and  Vermont],  who  are  mostly  destitute  of  the 
preached  gospel,  many  of  which  are  our  brethren,  emigrants  from  this 
colony.”16  Yet  the  political  turmoil  of  the  era  forced  a  postponement  of 
these  plans,  while  the  wave  of  unbelief  which  accompanied  the  growing 
intellectual  influence  of  France  contributed  to  a  slackening  of  energy  in  all 
religious  undertakings. 

Ill 

The  Dawn  of  a  Wider  Home  Missionary  Interest  in  New  England 

(1783-1795) 

Up  to  the  withdrawal  of  French  influence  in  North  America  in  1763, 
the  continent  west  of  the  Hudson  River  valley  and  of  the  Alleghenies 
was  with  few  exceptions  inhabited  by  none  but  Indian  tribes.  In  1780 
the  “  utmost  west  ”  of  the  colonies  went  only  a  little  way  beyond  those 
boundaries.  The  movement  of  population  was  rather  northward  into 
Vermont  and  Maine  or  southward. 

14  Wheelock,  Eleazer,  A  Narrative  of  the  Origin,  Design,  Rise,  Progress  and  Present  State 
of  the  Moor's  Indian  Charity  School  in  Lebanon,  Ct.,  1762. 

14  Records  of  the  Society  for  Propagating  the  Gospel  among  the  Indians  and  Others  of  North 
America,  1787-1887 . 

w  Records  of  the  General  Association,  1738-1799. 


8 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


The  opening  by  act  of  Congress  in  1787  of  the  Northwest  Territory,  —  a 
vast  area  including  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  Michigan  and  Wisconsin,  — 
gave  a  continental  turn  to  New  England  thinking.  It  was  a  Massachusetts 
clergyman,  the  Rev.  Manasseh  Cutler,  a  forceful  hero  of  the  Revolution, 
who  drafted  that  part  of  the  Ordinance  of  1787  which  guaranteed  to  the 
new  territory  complete  religious  liberty,  the  public  support  of  a  school 
system  and  the  prohibition  of  slavery.  Former  soldiers  of  the  Revolu¬ 
tion,  at  the  Bunch  of  Grapes  Tavern  in  Boston  on  March  1,  1786,  had 
organized  the  Ohio  Company  of  Associates.  Led  by  General  Rufus  Put¬ 
nam  forty-eight  members  of  this  Company  made  the  first  settlement  in 
the  new  territory  at  Marietta  on  the  Ohio  River,  April  7,  1788.  In  Novem¬ 
ber  of  that  year  Dr.  Cutler  wrote  Putnam  announcing  contributions 
amounting  to  $200  “  for  the  support  of  preachers  and  schoolmasters  for 
the  present.”  This  may  have  been  the  first  home  missionary  money  ex¬ 
pended  in  Ohio.  Religious  services  were  held  at  Marietta  from  July  20, 
1788.  Daniel  Story,  the  first  pastor,  paid  in  part  by  the  Company,  began 
work  in  March,  1789. 

At  about  this  same  time  a  few  gentlemen  in  Massachusetts  had  received 
a  commission  from  the  Scottish  Society  for  Promoting  Christian  Knowl¬ 
edge  to  act  on  its  behalf  in  the  wise  use  of  funds  raised  to  help  instruct  and 
evangelize  the  aborigines  of  North  America.  Stung  by  a  sense  of  their  own 
negligence  these  men  procured  from  the  legislature  of  Massachusetts  in 
November,  1787,  a  charter  for  “  The  Society  for  Propagating  the  Gospel 
among  the  Indians  and  Others  in  North  America.”  This  society  assisted 
in  1790  in  the  support  of  Rev.  Zechariah  Mayhew  of  Martha’s  Vineyard 
and  of  Rev.  John  Sergeant  of  New  Stockbridge,  N.  Y.17  Up  to  1843,  its 
funds  were  mainly  expended  in  New  England  and  New  York  to  support 
instruction  to  the  Indians,  later  in  Illinois,  Michigan,  Wisconsin  and 
Canada;  later  still  in  recent  years  they  have  been  used  for  work  among 
Indians  and  colored  people.18 

The  early  nineties  witnessed  a  rising  interest  in  all  directions.  The 
Connecticut  General  Association  in  1793,  in  revival  of  the  policy  initiated 
nearly  twenty  years  earlier,  appointed  eight  of  the  settled  pastors,  among 
them  such  leaders  as  Rev.  Ammi  R.  Robbins  of  Norfolk,  Rev.  Samuel  J. 
Mills  of  Torringford  and  Rev.  Cotton  Mather  Smith  of  Sharon,  to  go  out 
for  a  period  of  four  months  each  to  preach  in  the  Vermont  and  New  York 
settlements.  They  were  allowed  $4.50  a  week  as  salary  and  $4.00  for  a 
pulpit  supply.19  In  that  same  year  the  indefatigable  missionary  to  the 
Oneida  Indians,  Rev.  Samuel  Kirkland,  whose  influence  had  kept  them 
neutral  in  the  Revolutionary  struggle,  laid  the  foundations  of  the  Academy 
which  became  in  1812  Hamilton  College;  while  at  Williamstown,  Mass., 
was  organized  the  sixth  New  England  institution  of  higher  learning, 
Williams  College.20  The  ministry  of  the  Connecticut  clergy  to  the  growing 
settlements  was  steadily  maintained.  By  1798  a  total  of  twenty-one  pas¬ 
tors,  released  for  the  purpose  by  their  parishes,  had  given  a  term  of  active 
service.  Their  experience  quickened  the  convictions  which  led  to  the 
founding  of  the  vigorous  Missionary  Society  of  Connecticut  in  1798. 

Pioneering  distresses  had  delayed  the  development  of  the  Ohio  project, 
but  in  1790  a  body  of  settlers  from  Connecticut,  through  the  Connecticut 
Land  Company,  entered  the  northeastern  portion  .of  Ohio,  known  as  the 
Western  Reserve,  establishing  their  homes  near  Cleveland.  The  first 
home  missionary  to  New  Connecticut,  was  David  Bacon  (1800).  In 
1801  Joseph  Badger  brought  along  the  college  idea  and  established  the  in- 


17  The  son  of  the  Sergeant  of  Stockbridge,  Mass.,  who  followed  the  Stockbridge  Indians 
to  their  New  York  home. 

18  Records  of  the  Society  to  1887. 

19  Records  of  the  General  Association. 

20  The  University  of  Vermont  was  chartered  but  not  active. 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


9 


stitution  which  in  1826  became  Western  Reserve  College.21  Massachusetts 
also  contributed  other  settlers  to  Marietta,  where  in  1796  the  First  Con¬ 
gregational  Church  was  properly  organized,  and  in  1797  Muskingum 
Academy,  which  developed  in  1835  into  Marietta  College.  These  groups 
of  hardy  pioneers  represented  the  westernmost  outpost  of  Congregation¬ 
alism  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

IV 

The  Second  Awakening  and  Its  Missionary  Aftermath  (1795-1807) 

“  The  new  century  came  in,”  says  Clark,  “  with  a  momentum  of  spiri¬ 
tual  power.  Church  membership  increased  thrice  as  fast  as  the  popula¬ 
tion.”  New  England  Congregationalism  had  almost  a  new  birth  in  the 
revival  spirit  which,  notwithstanding  the  acute  Unitarian  controversies^ 
began  to  be  felt  by  1791,  when  the  long  period  of  political  distraction  had 
come  to  an  inspiring  close.  All  Anglo-Saxon  Christendom  was  manifesting 
a  new  interest  in  the  extension  of  Christ’s  kingdom.22  In  1792  the  Baptist 
Missionary  Society  was  organized  in  England  to  support  William  Carey, 
who  started  in  that  year  on  his  forty-two  years  of  devoted  service  in  India. 
In  1795  the  London  Missionary  Society  began  its  world-ranging  work,  the 
Edinburgh  Missionary  Society  in  1796  and  in  1799  the  Church  Missionary 
Society.  In  New  England  religious  interest  reached  a  climax  in  1799  but 
continued  as  late  as  1805.  It  was  not  a  time  of  undue  excitement,  but  of 
the  steady  promotion  of  spiritual  strength.  Between  1798  and  1800  one 
hundred  and  fifty  revivals  were  reported  in  western  Massachusetts  and 
Connecticut.  No  one  great  preacher  dominated  the  period.23  Yet  south¬ 
ern  New  England  was  deeply  stirred  by  the  lofty  personality  and  impas¬ 
sioned  preaching  of  Timothy  Dwight,  who,  in  1795,  in  the  prime  of  his  years, 
coming  to  Yale  as  its  president,  had  routed  the  French  skepticism  which 
had  become  an  intellectual  fad  among  the  students.  Through  him  and 
many  others  there  was  aroused  an  apostolic  spirit  of  self-denial,  generosity 
and  genuine  missionary  zeal  which  inaugurated  a  “great  missionary  dec¬ 
ade.”  In  1796  the  New  York  Missionary  Society  was  organized,  in  1797 
the  Berkshire  and  Columbia  Missionary  Society,  in  1798  the  Missionary 
Society  of  Connecticut,  “  to  Christianize  the  heathen  in  North  America 
and  to  support  and  promote  Christian  knowledge  in  the  new  settlements  in 
the  United  States,”  and,  in  the  following  year,  the  Massachusetts  Mission¬ 
ary  Society,  “  to  carry  the  Gospel  to  the  heathen  in  America  and  across 
the  seas.”  Between  1801  and  1807  domestic  missionary  societies  were 
organized  in  each  New  England  state.  At  about  the  same  time  the  women 
of  New  England  began  to  organize  for  missionary  giving.  Fourteen  Bap¬ 
tist  and  Congregational  women  organized  in  1800  the  Boston  Female 
Society  for  Missionary  Purposes.  In  1802  Mrs.  Simpkins,  the  wife  of  the 
treasurer  of  the  Massachusetts  Society,  organized  the  Female  Cent  In¬ 
stitution,  to  provide  means  for  the  distribution  of  religious  literature.  In 
1804  Mrs.  Elizabeth  McFarland  of  Concord,  N.  H.,  started  the  New  Hamp¬ 
shire  Female  Cent  Institution,  to  which  local  Female  Cent  Societies  be¬ 
came  auxiliary.  This  latter  organization  has  maintained  a  continuous 
existence  until  today,  and  may  rightly  be  termed  the  oldest  existing  so¬ 
ciety  of  women  for  any  purpose  in  North  America.  During  its  first  year 
it  collected  $5;  during  its  history,  $276,635.  In  1800  the  New  York 
Missionary  Magazine  and  the  Connecticut  Evangelical  Magazine  were 
founded,  in  1803  the  Massachusetts  Missionary  Magazine,  in  1805  the 
Panoplist,  while  missionaries  from  England  on  their  way  to  their  fields 
in  the  West  Indies  or  North  America  and  missionary  publications  from 

21  Dunning,  Congregationalists  in  America ,  p.  429  f. 

22  History  of  Connecticut. 

23  Walker,  History  of  the  Congregational  Chtirches  in  the  United  States,  pp.  319,  320. 


10 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


over  the  sea  were  not  infrequent  means  of  missionary  uplift  in  New  Eng¬ 
land  homes.  The  Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Christian  Knowledge  was 
founded  in  1803,24  the  Connecticut  Religious  Tract  Society  in  1807.  Thus 
by  1807  all  New  England  was  fairly  ready  for  missionary  service  in  the 
pioneer  settlements  and  on  behalf  of  the  Indian  tribes.  In  that  same  year 
the  sum  of  $6,000  was  contributed  and  sent  to  England  by  American 
churches  of  all  denominations  for  Carey’s  work  in  India.25 

The  spirit  of  the  age  in  New  England  was  fairly  catholic.  The  churches 
were  not  interested  in  spreading  Congregationalism,  but  Christianity.  Under 
the  “  Plan  of  Union,”  adopted  in  1801  by  the  General  Association  of  Con¬ 
necticut  and  the  Presbyterian  General  Assembly,  providing  for  combined 
effort  in  founding  new  churches  in  central  New  York  and  northern  Ohio, 
the  religious  foundations  of  the  central  West  were  largely  laid,  to  the  im¬ 
mense  and  permanent  advantage  of  Presbyterianism.  For  the  next  thirty 
years  the  funds  raised  by  the  many  societies  in  New  England  were  mainly 
utilized  outside  of  New  England  in  new  settlements  and  in  foreign  lands 
with  the  unselfish  purpose  of  planting  Christian  institutions  wherever 
needed. 


V 

The  Student  Uprising  at  Williams  College  and  Andover  Theolog¬ 
ical  Seminary  (1806-1810) 

The  greatest  asset  of  this  age  of  revival  was  the  body  of  broad-minded, 
fine-spirited  leadership  it  brought  to  the  front,  alike  among  the  clergy,  the 
older  laity  and  the  youth.  In  1805  such  men  as  President  Timothy  Dwight, 
Dr.  Nathaniel  Emmons  and  Governor  John  Treadwell  of  Connecticut, 
Rev.  Joseph  Lyman  and  Dr.  Samuel  Spring  of  Massachusetts  were  promi¬ 
nent  among  the  older  ministers  and  laymen,  while  Lyman  Beecher,  Leon¬ 
ard  Woods,  Edward  D.  Griffin  and  Samuel  Worcester  were  in  their  early 
thirties.  By  that  year  twelve  institutions  of  higher  learning  had  been 
founded  within  New  England,  eastern  New  York  and  New  Jersey,  Middle- 
bury  being  the  most  recent  one  in  1800.  In  the  ten  active  colleges  there 
were  approximately  1,230  students.  A  fair  proportion  of  them  were  young 
men  whose  hearts  had  been  deeply  stirred  during  their  boyhood  days  by 
the  religious  spirit  of  the  times  and  who  were  not  unmindful  of  God’s 
claims  upon  them.  Two  young  men  of  this  sort  were  Samuel  J.  Mills,  Jr., 
and  Harvey  Loomis,  who,  fresh  from  a  great  revival  in  western  Connecti¬ 
cut,  went  together  to  Williams  College  in  1806.  Mills,  encouraged  by 
his  father,  who  had  himself  served  the  pioneer  settlements,  and  supported 
by  the  prayers  of  his  godly  mother,  cherished  a  definite  purpose  to  prepare  for 
missionary  service.  He  was  not  an  exceptional  student,  not  even  physi¬ 
cally  strong,  but  his  magnetic  enthusiasm  gave  him  a  marked  power  of 
leadership.26 

A  college  revival  in  the  preceding  winter  had  resulted  in  a  group  of  men 
who  were  in  the  habit  of  holding  regular  meetings  together  for  prayer.  It 
was  natural  for  Mills  and  Loomis  to  join  this  group.  One  day  in  August, 
1806,  five  young  men,  Green,  Loomis,  Mills,  Richards  and  Robbins,  met 
for  prayer,  and  with  unusual  seriousness  discussed  their  obligation  to  take 
the  gospel  to  the  heathen.  The  apparent  folly  of  the  project,  as  viewed 
by  one  or  two,  was  overborne  by  Mills’  convincing  appeal,  “  We  can  do  it 
if  we  will.”  An  approaching  storm  forced  them  to  take  refuge  under  a 
haystack,  where  was  made  the  famous  compact  to  look  forward  to  lives  of 
missionary  service  wherever  God  should  send  them. 

That  very  year  Dr.  Samuel  Spring  of  Newburyport  was  laying  his  plans 

24  It  disbanded  in  1870,  donating  its  trust  funds  to  the  care  of  the  C.  S.  S.  and  P.  S. . 

25  Richards,  Samuel  J.  Mills,  p.  70. 

™  Ibid.,  passim. 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


II 


for  an  institution  at  Andover  for  the  proper  training  of  a  learned  and  in¬ 
fluential  clergy.  The  missionary  impulse  was  an  important  factor  in  his 
thinking  and  pleading.  One  of  the  Andover  Associates,  a  Mr.  John  Norris 
of  Salem,  who  with  his  wife  gave  ten  thousand  dollars  to  the  enterprise, 
declared,  “  We  must  raise  ministers,  if  we  would  have  men  to  go  as  mis¬ 
sionaries."  On  this  basis  of  loyal  service  the  two  “  schools  ”  of  orthodox 
Congregationalism  reunited  in  the  step  which  created  immediately  a 
notable  center  of  missionary  zeal. 

The  purpose  of  the  Haystack  group  did  not  flag.  In  1808  in  old  East 
College  was  organized  the  Society  of  Brethren  “  to  effect  in  the  persons  of 
its  members  a  mission  or  missions  to  the  heathen.”  No  one  could  become 
a  member  unpledged.  The  first  five  signers  to  the  constitution  were 
Samuel  J.  Mills,  Ezra  Fisk,  James  Richards,  John  Seward  and  Luther  Rice. 
Five  others  were  admitted  at  Williams,  of  whom  two  died  while  at  college. 
The  Brethren  was  a  secret  society  devoted  to  self-improvement,  mutual 
support  and  the  missionary  enlistment  of  others.  It  was  made  secret  be¬ 
cause  of  the  general  attitude  of  students  and  people  toward  missions. 

Early  in  1810,  after  their  graduation,  Mills,  Rice  and  Richards  with  Gordon 
Hall  went  to  Andover  Theological  Seminary,  organized  two  years  before, 
to  receive  the  training  needed  for  missionary  efficiency.  There  they  met 
and  quickly  challenged  by  their  own  flaming  zeal  three  other  outstanding 
men,  Adoniram  Judson,  Jr.,  from  Brown  University,  Samuel  Newell  from 
Harvard  and  Samuel  Nott,  Jr.,  from  Union  College,  who  joined  the  “Breth¬ 
ren.”  For  sixty  years  this  Society  maintained  its  organization  at  Andover, 
almost  the  last  three  members  to  be  admitted  in  1870-72  being  Joseph 
Neesima  of  Japan,  Robert  A.  Hume  of  India  and  John  P.  Sanderson  of 
North  America.  It  furnished  during  these  years  a  splendid  succession  of 
outstanding  missionary  leaders,  representing  the  capacity,  the  energy  and 
the  heroic  faith  of  Congregationalism  at  its  best.  For  the  first  ten  years 
all  who  were  sent  out  by  the  American  Board,  except  one,  were  educated 
at  Andover. 


VI 

The  Organization  of  the  American  Board 
in  Response  to  the  Appeal  of  the  “  Brethren  ”  (1810) 

Without  delay  the  notable  group  at  Andover  appealed  to  the  churches 
to  open  a  way  for  their  despatch  to  a  foreign  mission  field.  On  June  28, 
1810,  Judson,  Mills,  Newell  and  Nott  made  a  strong  plea  to  the  Massa¬ 
chusetts  General  Association  at  Bradford.  Their  proposal  was  indeed  a 
challenge.  The  Association  was  only  seven  years  old ;  its  membership  was 
cautious  and  conservative.  Two  young  men,  probably  Richards  and  Rice, 
who  were  ready  to  join  with  the  four,  did  not  present  themselves  lest  the 
Association  be  alarmed  by  so  large  a  number  of  candidates.  Only  too 
many  in  the  churches  were  inclined  to  characterize  devotedness  like  theirs 
as  “  overheated  zeal.”  Fortunately,  however,  the  Association  and  the 
real  leadership  of  the  churches  of  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  included 
a  remarkable  group  of  men.  When  Moses  Stuart  left  New  Haven  in 
1810  for  his  new  professorship  at  Andover,  his  young  deacon,  Jeremiah 
Evarts,  left  on  the  same  coach  for  Boston  to  take  charge  of  the  Panoplist 
and  to  be,  like  Doctors  Samuel  Worcester,  Samuel  Spring,  Edward  D. 
Griffin  and  Jedediah  Morse,  profoundly  interested  in  every  educational, 
theological,  reformatory  or  missionary  enterprise  of  the  time,  giving  it 
momentum  and  shaping  its  trend.27 

After  a  long  debate,  swayed,  we  are  told,  by  the  energetic  faith  of  Dr. 
Worcester,  it  was  voted  with  due  solemnity  to  take  steps  to  form  an  or¬ 
ganization  under  the  joint  auspices  of  the  churches  of  Massachusetts  and 

7  Paper  by  Secretary  Alden,  Report  of  the  American  Board,  1882,  p.  xxxiii. 


12 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


Connecticut.  Of  its  nine  members  five  represented  the  Massachusetts 
Association;  four  were  from  Connecticut.  These  were  to  elect  their 
successors.  On  September  5,  1810,  at  Farmington,  Ct.,  the  American 
Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions  came  into  being.  Six  men 
were  present,  Governor  John  Treadwell  of  Farmington,  who  was  chosen 
president,  Dr.  Samuel  Worcester  of  Salem,  who  became  the  secretary,  Dr. 
Samuel  Spring  of  Newburyport,  Dr.  Joseph  Lyman  of  Hatfield,  and  Dr. 
Calvin  Chapin  of  Wethersfield,  with  Rev.  Noah  Porter  of  Farmington,28 
invited  as  their  host  to  take  a  place  in  the  company.  Deacon  Noah  Porter, 
his  aged  father,  was  so  interested  in  the  report  of  the  proceedings  that 
he  gave  the  Board  $500  soon  after  this  meeting,  one-fifth  of  his  property. 
The  newly  constituted  Board  elected  a  Prudential  Committee  of  three, 
which  it  instructed  to  make  a  careful  survey  of  unevangelized  peoples  and 
to  report  at  the  next  meeting.  At  Worcester  in  September,  1811,  the 
Committee  suggested  two  desirable  fields,  the  Burman  empire  and  the 
North  American  Indian  territory. 

The  Board  needed  the  period  which  its  candidates  required  for  training 
that  it  might  raise  the  funds  essential  for  their  outfit  and  steady  support. 
The  response  to  its  appeal  was  at  first  disappointing.  It  had  sent  Judson 
over  to  England  in  Jan.,  1811,  to  propose  to  the  London  Missionary  Society 
a  joint  undertaking.  When  that  Society  declined  this  proposal  the  cor¬ 
poration  hesitated  to  take  the  great  risks  involved  in  the  enterprise,  until 
at  last  Judson  declared  that  he  and  his  associates  would  brook  no  further 
delay.  If  they  could  not  go  out  under  the  American  Board,  they  declared 
that  they  would  accept  the  appointments  already  tendered  to  them  by  the 
London  Missionary  Society.  By  a  fresh  appeal  to  the  churches  sufficient 
funds  were  secured  for  the  initiation  of  the  enterprise;  and  on  February  6, 
1812,  —  the  very  year  of  Henry  Martyn’s  death  at  Tokat  in  Asia,  —  five 
young  men,  Hall,  Judson,  Newell,  Nott  and  Rice,  were  ordained  at  the 
Tabernacle  Church,  Salem,  Mass.,  by  five  clergymen,  Worcester,  Spring, 
Griffin,  Morse  and  Professor  Woods,  to  the  work  they  longed  to  undertake. 
With  them  went  three  noble  young  women,  Ann  Haseltine  Judson,  Harriet 
Newell  and  Roxana  Peck  Nott,  pioneers  of  a  long  procession  of  gifted 
American  women  who  have  given  themselves  cheerfully  to  the  hardships 
and  problems  of  missionary  service.  As  speedily  as  possible  the  devoted 
band  of  eight  set  out  in  two  groups  for  Calcutta  and  the  long  and  splendid 
history  of  the  American  Board  began. 

The  organizers  of  the  Board  were  strongly  evangelical  in  temper  yet 
catholic  in  spirit.  They  were  Congregationalists,  but  lost  no  time  in  open¬ 
ing  the  way  for  the  friendly  cooperation  of  the  Presbyterian  churches,  after 
discovering  that  the  General  Assembly  was  not  ready  to  organize  a  Pres¬ 
byterian  Board  of  Foreign  Missions.  Presbyterians  were  represented  on 
the  corporation  by  1812.  One  member  was  added  from  the  Associate  Re¬ 
formed  Church  in  1814,  one  more  from  the  Reformed  (Dutch)  Church  in 
1816,  and  one,  still  later,  from  the  Reformed  German  Church.29 

VII 

Fifteen  Fruitful  Years  of  Exploration  and  Organization  (1812— 

1826) 

The  next  fifteen  years  were  required  for  the  process  of  bringing  the 
churches  up  to  the  level  of  the  new  missionary  impulse.  The  Board  was  a 
spiritual  venture.  Its  legal  charter  was  secured  only  after  two  exciting 
sessions  of  the  Massachusetts  legislature.  Its  continuance  and  growth, 
no  less  than  the  group  of  associated  enterprises  which  followed  it,  owed 
much  to  the  devotion,  foresight  and  zeal  of  the  very  one  who  had  led  in  its 

28  The  father  of  President  Noah  Porter  of  Yale. 

29  Bliss,  Encyclopedia  of  Missions,  2d  edit.,  p.  27. 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


13 


founding,  Samuel  J.  Mills.  By  genius  a  promoter  rather  than  a  builder, 
Mills  had  been  deliberately  set  apart  by  the  Brethren  for  the  work  of 
arousing  college  and  theological  students  and  the  churches.30  Yet  not  even 
did  this  great  task  set  limits  to  his  energy.  Soon  after  the  missionaries 
had  set  sail  for  India,  Mills,  under  the  commission  of  the  Missionary 
Societies  of  Connecticut  and  Massachusetts  and  of  the  Society  for  Prop¬ 
agating  the  Gospel  among  the  Indians,  began  a  remarkable  tour  of  explora¬ 
tion  throughout  the  inhabited  West.  Only  nine  years  before,  in  April,  1803, 
the  Louisiana  Purchase  had  been  consummated.  Settlers  lined  the  lakes 
and  rivers.  Mills  spent  a  whole  year,  at  a  net  cost  of  $338,  in  traversing 
the  newly  settled  portions  of  New  York,  Ohio,  Kentucky,  Tennessee,  Louis¬ 
iana,  Mississippi  and  Georgia,  investigating  religious  conditions,  founding 
Bible  societies  and  preaching  the  gospel.  His  report  on  the  Indians  of 
the  southern  states  was  an  important  factor  in  encouraging  the  Board 
about  six  years  later  to  begin  its  work  for  the  Indians  of  Tennessee  and 
Mississippi.  After  a  year  spent  largely  in  appeals  to  theological  students 
and  in  the  organization  of  local  missionary  and  Bible  societies  in  New 
England,  Mills  made  a  second  tour  of  nine  months  over  much  the  same 
territory.  His  challenging  reports  deeply  stirred  the  churches. 

The  year  1816  was  noteworthy.  A  new  theological  seminary  was  or¬ 
ganized  at  Bangor,  Maine.  In  May  the  Bible  societies  of  Connecticut, 
Massachusetts,  New  Jersey  and  New  York,  four  of  the  one  hundred  and 
thirty-two  Bible  societies  instituted  during  the  years  following  the  organ¬ 
ization  of  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  in  1804,  were  persuaded 
by  the  persistency  and  genius  of  Mills  to  extend  and  coordinate  their 
activities  through  the  American  Bible  Society  of  New  York.  In  October 
the  Society  for  the  Moral  and  Religious  Instruction  of  the  Poor  was  organ¬ 
ized  in  Boston  to  sustain  Sunday-school  work.31  In  December,  largely 
because  of  the  appeals  of  Mills  and  other  young  men  for  trained  Christian 
leaders  for  home  and  foreign  service,  there  was  organized  in  Boston  the 
American  Society  for  the  Education  of  Pious  Youth  for  the  Gospel  Min¬ 
istry,  which  later  became  the  American  Education  Society.  In  May,  1814, 
the  persuasive  pleading  of  Professor  Porter  of  Andover  had  led  to  the  form¬ 
ing  of  the  New  England  Tract  Society,  which  in  1825  developed  with  other 
local  societies  into  the  American  Tract  Society.  These  four  societies 
represented  distinctly  Congregational  initiative,  but  were  conceived  on  so 
high-minded  and  unselfish  a  plan  that  they  served  from  the  beginning  all 
churches  which  did  not  prefer  so  to  serve  themselves.  Under  the  Plan  of 
Union  the  Connecticut  Missionary  Society  was  cheerfully  contributing  its 
representatives  and  its  resources  to  promote  a  Christian  civilization  in  the 
Mississippi  valley  without  questioning  the  presumption  that  the  churches 
formed  should  be  Presbyterian  in  organization.  So  real  was  the  spirit  of 
fraternity  that  Mills  had  much  to  do  with  the  organization  in  July,  1817, 
of  the  United  Foreign  Missionary  Society,  which  enlisted  the  Presbyterian, 
Dutch  Reformed  and  Associate  Reformed  churches,  under  the  official 
control  of  the  General  Assembly  and  the  General  Synods,  to  push  specif¬ 
ically  the  evangelization  of  Mexico,  of  South  America  and  of  the  Indians 
of  North  America.  He  was  also  active  in  the  establishment  in  1816  of  the 
African  School  of  New  Jersey,  controlled  by  the  Synod  of  New  York  and 
New  Jersey.  The  last  enterprise  of  this  zealous,  self-forgetful,  tolerant 
apostle  was  the  exploration  of  the  west  coast  of  Africa,  as  an  agent  of  the 
American  Colonization  Society  organized  in  1817.  On  the  return  voyage, 
June  15,  1818,  his  great  soul  passed  away.  More  than  any  one  man  he  had 
pioneered  the  way  for  a  missionary  century. 

Meanwhile  the  American  Board  had  developed  active  missions  at  Bom¬ 
bay  in  India,  at  Jaffna  in  Ceylon  and  among  the  Cherokees  of  Tennessee 

30  Richards.  Samuel  J.  Mills,  p.  79. 

31  This  Society  eventually  became  the  Boston  City  Missionary  Society,  which  is  still  active. 
Its  Sunday-school  work  was  taken  over  by  the  Massachusetts  Sabbath  School  Society. 


14 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


and  the  Choctaws  of  Mississippi.  Judson  and  Rice  on  reaching  Calcutta 
in  June,  1811,  announced  their  change  of  views  regarding  baptism,  were 
immersed  and  withdrew  from  the  control  of  the  Board.  This  apparent 
disaster  led  in  1814  to  the  organization  of  the  Baptist  General  Convention,32 
a  great  sister  Society.  The  three  remaining  missionaries  were  forced  to 
leave  Calcutta.  On  February  11,  1813,  Mall  and  Nott  reached  Bombay; 
Newell,  after  the  death  of  his  wife  in  the  Isle  of  France,  reached  Ceylon. 
The  next  January  he  joined  his  brethren  at  Bombay,  having  first  satisfied 
himself  that  Ceylon  was  a  practicable  field.  They  were  allowed  to  remain 
at  Bombay  under  sufferance.  They  spent  the  time  in  such  tactful  cor¬ 
respondence  with  the  authorities  in  Bombay  and  in  England,  and  em¬ 
ployed  themselves  so  wisely  and  discreetly,  that  they  won  from  parlia¬ 
ment  the  permission  to  labor  among  the  peoples  of  India  as  translators, 
teachers  and  evangelists.  In  1815  five  more  men,  Bardwell,  Meigs,  Poor, 
Richards  and  Warren,  were  appointed  by  the  Board  to  India.  Bardwell, 
who  was  a  printer,  went  to  Bombay;  the  others  made  their  way  to  Jaffna, 
in  northern  Ceylon,  where  in  October,  1816,  they  began  the  second  mission 
of  the  Board.  In  the  next  two  years  the  two  Indian  missions  were  founded 
and  the  Foreign  School  at  Cornwall,  Conn.,  for  the  training  of  promising 
youths  from  mission  areas  for  home  evangelization,  was  opened  with 
twelve  students,  five  of  them  from  the  Sandwich  Islands  and  two  from  India. 
The  latter  enterprise  was  generously  conceived  but  proved  futile.  The  grad¬ 
uates  almost  without  exception  proved  unfitted  for  useful  evangelization 
among  their  own  people.  In  1827  the  school  was  abandoned. 

During  the  next  three  years,  1818-1820,  the  Missionary  Herald ,  successor 
of  a  group  of  missionary  magazines,  was  made  the  official  organ  of  the 
Board;  and  three  new  missions  were  undertaken.  Pliny  Fiske  and  Levi 
Parsons  went  to  Palestine  in  1819  to  spy  out  the  land,  while  Hiram  Bing¬ 
ham  and  Asa  Thurston  with  their  wives  and  a  group  of  unordained 
associates  started  around  Cape  Horn  for  the  Sandwich  Islands.  At  this 
early  date  the  Board  had  begun  to  conceive  of  its  task  as  the  development 
of  a  Christian  civilization  along  with  the  conversion  of  individuals.  It 
had  commissioned  farmers,  mechanics  and  printers  as  well  as  ordained 
missionaries.  In  1819  Dr.  John  Scudder,  the  first  physician  sent  out  by 
the  American  Board,  and  in  1820  Myron  Winslow  and  Levi  Spaulding  re¬ 
ported  at  Ceylon  and  a  new  mission  to  the  southwestern  Cherokees  was 
begun.  The  American  Board  itself  in  1826  absorbed  the  United  Foreign 
Missionary  Society  and  the  mission  of  the  Synod  of  South  Carolina  and 
Georgia,  thus  adding  eight  missions,  mainly  to  the  Indians,  and  fifty- five 
missionaries  to  its  roster.  This  gave  the  Board  a  total  of  sixteen  missions 
with  forty-six  stations  and  two  hundred  and  twenty-three  American  mis¬ 
sionary  laborers  of  all  types.  West  Africa,  South  Africa,  Greece  and  South 
China  were  by  that  time  under  consideration.  Of  the  missionaries  of 
1812  none  were  left  in  1826  in  the  service  of  the  Board,33  but  many  heroic 
and  noble  men  were  at  their  work.  The  development  of  native  workers 
was  still  in  the  future. 

Within  these  years  were  established  the  American  Sunday  School  Union 
(1824),  the  National  Temperance  Society  (1826),  and  the  American  Tract 
Society  (1825),  organizations  in  which  Congregationalists  were  strongly 
represented.  Through  such  organizations  not  only  were  Christian  forces 
given  the  leadership  they  craved,  but  the  literature  and  method  of  pioneer¬ 
ing  began  to  be  worked  out.  Amherst  College  in  182 134  and  the  Yale 

82  The  General  Convention  of  the  Baptist  Denomination  in  the  U.  S.  A.  for  Foreign  Mis¬ 
sions.  In  1846  it  was  incorporated  as  The  American  Baptist  Missionary  Union.  It  is 
now  known  as  The  American  Baptist  Foreign  Mission  Society. 

33  Because  of  ignorance  of  proper  sanitary  precautions  and  for  other  similar  reasons  the 
early  missionary  mortality  was  very  great.  There  were  more  deaths  than  converts  in  the 
first  ten  years. 

34  In  1880,  eighty  per  cent  of  the  missionaries  of  the  American  Board  had  come  from  New 
England,  half  of  them  from  Amherst  and  Williams. 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM  1 5 

Divinity  School  in  1822  added  to  the  institutions  which  furnished  a  steady 
stream  of  leaders  for  Christian  service. 

The  year  1826  was  noteworthy  for  another  important  reason.  In 
January,  1825,  a  few  Andover  men,  Rev.  Nathaniel  Bouton,  a  recent  gradu¬ 
ate,  with  Aaron  Foster  and  Hiram  Chamberlain  of  the  Senior  class,  be¬ 
came  impressed,  during  an  historic  trip  from  Andover  to  Newburyport  and 
back,  by  the  urgent  need  for  domestic  missions  in  the  new  West  and  South 
and  by  the  specific  demand  for  ministers  in  the  new  communities  so  rapidly 
developing.  A  committee  of  eight  was  appointed  by  the  “  Society  of 
Inquiry,”  to  bring  the  matter  to  the  attention  of  the  churches.  It  had  the 
invaluable  counsel  and  encouragement  of  Professor  Ebenezer  Porter,  who 
gave  dignity  and  steadiness  to  the  project.  Six  seniors  pledged  themselves 
to  home  mission  service,  the  two  initiators,  with  Lucius  Alden,  Luther 
Bingham,  John  M.  Ellis  and  Augustus  Pomeroy.  They  were  commissioned 
by  three  different  societies  and  ordained  in  Boston,  September  29,  1825. 
The  next  day  Professor  Porter  called  a  small  group  of  leaders  together  to 
consider  the  desirability  of  forming  a  national  society.  This  gathering 
requested  Professors  Porter  and  Edwards  and  Dr.  Nathaniel  Taylor  to 
make  a  thoughtful  study  of  the  proposition.  The  outcome  was  that  on 
May  10,  1826,  one  hundred  and  twenty-six  ministers  and  laymen  of  four 
denominations  and  from  thirteen  states  and  territories  gathered  at  the 
Brick  Church,  New  York,  endorsed  the  favorable  report  of  this  committee 
and  approved  a  constitution.  The  new  organization,  known  as  the  Ameri¬ 
can  Home  Missionary  Society,  absorbed  the  work  of  the  United  Domestic 
Missionary  Society  of  New  York,  which  had  been  formed  in  1822  by  dele¬ 
gates  from  ten  small  local  societies  of  New  York  State.  It  represented  the 
interests  of  the  New  England  societies,  of  the  Board  of  Domestic  Missions 
of  the  General  Assembly  and  of  those  of  the  Reformed  Synods.  Thus  was 
laid  a  basis  for  united,  aggressive  national  service.  In  its  first  year  this 
Society  commissioned  one  hundred  and  sixty-nine  missionaries  at  an  aver¬ 
age  cost  for  a  year  of  labor  of  $127. 

VIII 

Rapid  Foreign  Missionary  Expansion  (1827-1852) 

The  next  decade  witnessed  a  rather  steady  advance  of  foreign  missionary 
activity,  supported  by  a  corporate  membership  unmatched  for  “  learning, 
wealth,  character  and  leadership.”35  Dr.  Rufus  Anderson  nobly  main¬ 
tained  as  Secretary  the  traditions  of  Dr.  Samuel  Worcester  and  of  Jeremiah 
Evarts.  In  1836  he  outlined  on  the  basis  of  a  comprehensive  survey  of  the 
world  as  then  known  a  scheme  for  the  evangelization  of  the  world,  which 
called  for  a  missionary  force  of  3,780.  Many  features  of  that  daring  plan 
have  since  been  followed. 

In  this  decade  the  Board  undertook  sixteen  new  enterprises  in  the  Near 
East,  China,  India,  Siam,  Africa  and  North  America.  When  William 
Goodell  entered  Constantinople  in  1831  that  city  became  the  starting  point 
of  extensive  explorations  eastward  which  convinced  Eli  Smith  and  Harrison 
Dwight  of  the  attractiveness  and  opportunity  of  the  Armenian  and  Nes- 
torian  fields.  Smyrna,  Trebizond,  Brousa  and  Urumia  were  occupied, 
while  the  older  mission  to  Syria  was  reenforced  by  Eli  Smith,  William  M. 
Thomson  and  Cornelius  V.  A.  Van  Dyck. . 

Meanwhile  a  work  had  been  started  in  South  China  at  the  appeal  of 
Robert  Morrison.  Elijah  C.  Bridgman  and  David  Abeel  reached  Canton 
in  1830.  Within  four  years  S.  Wells  Williams  had  joined  as  director  of 
press  work  and  Peter  Parker  had  inaugurated  a  distinctive  medical  mis¬ 
sionary  service.  His  hospital  and  training  school  were  the  forerunners 

35  Strong,  The  Story  of  the  American  Board,  p.  154. 


1 6  MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 

of  the  vast  ministry  of  relief  of  today.  Even  with  this  aid  the  progress  of 
the  mission  was  infinitely  slow. 

In  striking  contrast  was  the  work  in  the  Sandwich  Islands  and  in  India. 
In  1832  the  mid-Pacific  islanders,  led  by  their  queen,  seemed  to  be  rapidly 
becoming  a  Christian  people.  In  Jaffna  and  Bombay  there  were  revivals 
and  a  great  extension  of  all  kinds  of  mission  work,  while  at  Ahmednagar 
in  1831,  at  Madura  in  1834  and  in  Madras  in  1836,  new  missions  were  be¬ 
gun.  R.  W.  Hume,  Samuel  Fairbank,  James  Herrick  and  Joseph  Noyes 
were  some  of  the  recruits,  together  with  Cynthia  Farrar  (1827),  who  was 
the  first  single  woman  to  receive  appointment. 

In  North  America  the  work  among  the  Indians  had  begun  to  show  great 
promise,  when  the  national  policy  of  transferring  them  to  distant  reserva¬ 
tions  threw  it  into  confusion  and  made  it  unstable.  The  Board  followed 
the  tribes  to  their  new  homes  and  opened  missions  among  the  trans-Missis¬ 
sippi  tribes.  In  1836  the  intrepid  Dr.  Marcus  Whitman  and  Rev.  H.  H. 
Spalding,  accompanied  by  their  wives,  forced  their  way  over  the  Oregon 
trail  between  February  and  September  and  settled  among  the  tribes  of 
eastern  Oregon,  near  what  is  now  the  city  of  Walla  Walla.  In  September, 
1842,  Whitman  undertook  the  daring  ride  back  across  the  continent  to 
urge  the  Prudential  Committee  to  reconsider  its  avowed  intention  of 
abolishing  the  mission  and  to  appeal  to  the  Government  at  Washington  to 
secure  Oregon  to  the  United  States.  Heartened  by  the  permission  of  the 
Board  to  continue  his  work  for  the  Indians  and  encouraged  by  the  attitude 
of  the  Government  he  hastened  back  to  Oregon  in  1843,  assisting  the  first 
group  of  hardy  pioneers  to  get  through.  In  four  short  years  the  mission 
force  at  Walla  Walla  was  massacred,  but  the  great  Northwest  had  been 
given  an  enduring  impulse. 

The  year  1837  was  one  of  widespread  financial  disaster,  causing  sharp 
retrenchment  of  mission  work,  particularly  in  the  successful  areas.  In 
Ceylon,  where  fourteen  schools  were  left  out  of  one  hundred  and  eighty- 
seven,  the  advance  was  checked  for  a  generation.  Among  the  American 
Indian  missions  disheartening  cuts  had  to  be  made.  This  disaster  affected 
the  work  of  the  Board  for  years.  Not  until  1852  did  another  bold  advance 
begin.  The  years  between  were  not,  of  course,  years  of  absolute  barren¬ 
ness.  The  Sandwich  Islands  had  been  too  far  away  in  1837  to  be  affected 
by  the  depression.  A  great  revival,  which  culminated  in  1838-39, 
was  under  full  headway.  Titus  Coan  in  July,  1838,  baptized  1,705  per¬ 
sons  on  one  Sunday.  Despite  all  kinds  of  difficulties  the  next  decade  saw 
the  Hawaiian  nation  formally  recognized  as  civilized  and  predominantly 
Christian. 

The  decade  between  1840  and  1850  witnessed  many  changes.  The 
stations  at  Singapore  and  in  Borneo  were  given  up  and  Siam  was  trans¬ 
ferred  in  1849  to  the  American  Missionary  Association.  Asia  Minor, 
Syria,  India,  Ceylon  and  South  Africa  settled  down  into  the  missions  of 
today.  In  China  the  ending  of  the  Opium  War  in  1842  opened  five  treaty 
ports,  three  of  which,  Amoy,  Foochow  and  Shanghai,  were  occupied  by 
1847.  Everywhere  it  was  the  policy  of  the  Board  to  emphasize  education. 
Groups  of  efficient  educational  institutions  developed,  which  attracted  the 
choicest  young  men  of  each  missionary  area.  By  1850  the  Board  was 
directing  twenty-four  active  missions,  distributed  over  ten  great  world 
areas,  in  each  of  which  it  had  a  legal  standing  and  relative  freedom.  In 
each  of  these  missions,  along  with  evangelization,  translation  and  publi¬ 
cation,  education,  medical  relief,  and  vocational  training  in  various 
tentative  forms  were  developing.  In  1833,  with  the  division  of  the  Presby¬ 
terian  Church  into  Old  School  and  New  School,  the  New  School  congrega¬ 
tions  continued  their  foreign  missionary  work  through  the  American 
Board,  the  Old  School  Presbyterians  working  through  the  Western  Foreign 
Missionary  Society,  which  had  been  established  by  the  Synod  of  Pitts¬ 
burgh.  Out  of  this  Society  grew  in  1837  the  Presbyterian  Board  of  Foreign 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


1 7 


Missions.  The  Presbyterians  under  the  leadership  of  Dr.  Elisha  P.  Swift 
were  in  favor  of  organizing  their  missionary  work  as  a  part  of  the  regular 
work  of  the  Church  rather  than  under  an  independent  society.  It  is 
interesting  to  note  that  the  gradual  development  of  a  denominational  con¬ 
sciousness  has  led  Congregationalists  to  the  same  position. 

IX 

The  Union  Home  Missionary  Movement  (1826-1852) 

The  organization  of  the  American  Home  Missionary  Society  (1826)  was 
the  response  of  statesmanlike  leaders  to  three  appeals,  that  of  an  extend¬ 
ing  frontier  with  its  religious  desolateness,  that  of  a  sense  of  the  responsibil¬ 
ity  of  religiously  strong  New  England  to  the  whole  nation,  and  that  of  the 
demand  in  the  newly  settled  regions  for  settled  pastors  rather  than  for 
itinerant  preachers.  Mills,  in  1812,  had  called  attention  to  the  ignorance 
and  intense  sectarianism  of  the  uneducated  preachers  of  these  areas.  Both 
those  at  home  and  those  who  pioneered  were  anxious  to  transfer  to  the 
frontier  the  characteristic  love  of  civil  and  religious  order  and  zeal  for 
church  and  school  that  dominated  the  East.  It  was  still  taken  for  granted 
that  Congregationalism  was  ill  adapted  to  pioneering  conditions  and  that 
New  England  should  cheerfully  support  expanding  Presbyterianism. 

The  rapid  development  of  western  New  York  and  of  the  Northwest 
Territory  threw  a  heavy  burden  upon  the  Society.  In  1827  three-fourths 
of  its  one  hundred  and  sixty-nine  missionaries  labored  in  the  state  of  New 
York,  twenty-five  in  the  Northwest  Territory,  thirteen  in  the  South. 
In  1831,  out  of  four  hundred  and  sixty-three  missionaries  in  twenty-two 
states  and  territories,  one  hundred  and  eighty-five  ministered  to  parishes  in 
New  England  and  the  East,  one  hundred  and  twelve  were  in  central  and 
western  New  York,  one  hundred  and  twenty-nine  were  in  the  Northwest 
and  thirty-one  in  the  South.  At  the  tenth  annual  meeting  in  May,  1836, 
out  of  seven  hundred  and  fifty-six  missionaries  and  agents  one  hundred  and 
fifty-four  were  reported  in  the  Northwest  and  thirty-three  in  the  South. 
Thus  there  was  a  steady  pushing  out  into  the  pioneer  country. 

The  situation  in  the  rapidly  developing  West  made  a  strong  appeal  to 
earnest-minded  students.  In  1828,  Theron  Baldwin,  a  theological  stu¬ 
dent  at  Yale,  read  before  the  Society  of  Inquiry  a  paper  on  “  Individual 
Effort  in  the  Cause  of  Christ,”  which  led  Mason  Grosvenor,  his  classmate, 
to  propose  a  grouping  of  service  in  some  new  territory.  Seven  men,  these 
two  with  John  F.  Brooks,  Elisha  Jenney,  William  Kirby,  John  M.  Sturte- 
vant  and  Asa  Turner,  formed  an  “  Illinois  Association.”  Their  correspon¬ 
dence  with  Rev.  John  M.  Ellis,  who  had  been  at  work  in  the  new  territory 
several  years,  led  them  to  unite  their  efforts,  while  still  at  Yale,  with  his 
for  the  founding  of  Illinois  College.  They  raised  $10,000  on  its  behalf. 
During  1829  five  others  joined  them,  Romulus  Barnes,  Flavel  Bascom, 
William  Carter,  Albert  Hale  and  Lucien  Farnham.  Nine  were  Yale  men, 
Jenney  from  Dartmouth,  Brooks  from  Hamilton  and  Farnham  from  Am¬ 
herst. 

In  1829  Illinois  was  true  frontier.  In  1825  Michigan  had  just  one 
Protestant  preacher,  while  Wisconsin  was  a  wilderness  until  1834.  Under 
those  pioneer  conditions,  meeting  at  the  outset  prejudice  as  well  as  hard¬ 
ship,  these  devoted  men  and  their  brave  wives  worked  in  friendly  concert. 
Sturtevant  opened  Illinois  College  in  January,  1830.  Baldwin,  Bascom 
and  Turner  with  him  made  a  quartet  who  rank  among  the  historic  charac¬ 
ters  of  the  commonwealth  of  Illinois.  These  missionaries  laid  foundations 
which  have  made  the  central  West  a  stronghold  of  the  Congregational 
order.  Their  enterprising  energy  so  quickened  a  zeal  for  home  missions  at 
Yale  that  the  Divinity  School  became  for  decades  a  dependable  source  of 


i8 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


Christian  leadership  in  the  growing  West.  Their  successful  work  also  in¬ 
spired  the  organization  of  a  second  group. 

In  1843,  when  the  new  territory  of  Iowa  was  in  process  of  settlement, 
an  “  Iowa  Band  ”  of  eleven  men,  Harvey  Adams,  Edwin  B.  Turner,  Daniel 
Love,  Erastus  Ripley,  James  J.  Hill,  Benjamin  A.  Spaulding,  Alden  B. 
Robbins,  Horace  Hutchinson,  Ephraim  Adams,  Ebenezer  Alden,  Jr.,  and 
William  Salter,  was  organized  at  Andover  to  Christianize  that  trans- 
Mississippi  area.  As  forerunners  they  had  a  small  group  of  unusual  men, 
such  as  Asa  Turner  of  the  Illinois  Band,  Reuben  Gaylord  and  Julius  A. 
Reed.  The  soil  was  ready;  the  sowers  were  competent  as  well  as  self- 
sacrificing.  In  fifteen  years  Congregationalism,  backed  by  its  college 
Grinnell  (1847),  had  taken  deep  root  in  Iowa.  Thus  these  two  groups  of 
young  leaders  and  their  associates,  persistently  loyal  to  their  ancestral 
ideals,  settled  for  all  time  the  legitimacy  and  value  of  Congregationalism 
in  the  Middle  West. 

In  1832,  the  Massachusetts  Sabbath  School  Society  was  organized,  under 
auspices  definitely  Congregational,  to  take  the  place  of  the  Massachusetts 
Sabbath  School  Union  of  1825,  which  had  been  shared  with  the  Baptists. 
Each  denomination  wished  to  be  free  to  minister  to  its  own  constituency. 
The  new  Society  despite  its  name  had  nation-wide  plans.  Within  two 
years  Asa  Bullard  began  his  noteworthy  forty  years  of  service.  For  seven 
years  the  Society  was  an  auxiliary  of  the  American  Sunday  School  Union, 
but  in  1839  it  became  independent  and  in  1841  was  chartered  with  provision 
for  departments  of  missionary  extension,  education  and  publication. 
Such  leaders  as  Horace  Bushnell,  Lyman  Beecher  and  Calvin  Stowe  were 
its  enthusiastic  supporters,  speaking  often  on  its  behalf.  In  1846-8  the 
other  state  Sunday  School  Unions  of  New  England  recognized  the  Society 
as  their  agency  in  national  service.  By  1849  it  served  twenty  areas  in 
North  America. 

Two  other  important  developments  of  this  quarter  century  of  home 
missionary  pioneering  deserve  mention  because  of  their  significance  for  the 
missionary  history  of  Congregationalism.  In  1833  Oberlin  was  founded 
as  a  distinctively  educational  Christian  center,  unhampered  by  any  type 
of  ecclesiasticism  or  social  theory.  It  drew  no  lines  of  sex  or  color.  Its 
students,  trained  by  Finney,  Morgan  and  Mahan,  were  foremost  in  the 
discussions  and  the  self-denying  enterprises  of  anti-slavery  days.  Of  similar 
importance  was  the  founding  in  rapid  succession  of  Western  Reserve, 
Illinois,  Marietta,  Knox,  Beloit  and  Iowa  Colleges  by  men  who  desired  an 
adequate  supply  of  competent  ministers  and  teachers.  From  such  in¬ 
stitutions  as  these  have  come  the  missionary  leadership  of  today.  They 
could  hardly  have  developed  into  strength  had  not  Theron  Baldwin,  keenly 
aware  of  the  strategic  value  of  Christian  education  in  national  growth, 
taken  counsel  with  Leonard  Bacon  and  the  two  Beechers  and  organized, 
in  1843,  a  Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Collegiate  and  Theological  Educa¬ 
tion  at  the  West  to  assist  colleges  and  theological  schools.  The  American 
Education  Society  at  that  time  declined  to  undertake  the  support  of  institu¬ 
tions  lest  its  work  of  educating  ministers  be  endangered.  The  former 
society  in  its  first  year  helped  Illinois,  Wabash,  Western  Reserve  and 
Marietta,  besides  Lane  and  Western  Reserve  Theological  Seminaries. 
Up  to  1850  its  field  covered  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  Iowa  and  Wisconsin. 
It  won  for  Baldwin  the  well-deserved  title,  “  Father  of  Western  Colleges,” 
and  helped  to  found  a  series  of  institutions  in  which  Congregationalists 
will  ever  take  justifiable  pride. 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


19 


X 

The  Rise  of  the  American  Missionary  Association  (1842-1861) 

Meanwhile  another  great  Society  was  in  process  of  incubation.  Ever 
since  the  founding  in  1790  of  the  Connecticut  Anti-slavery  Society  by 
President  Stiles  to  repatriate  negro  slaves,  and  of  the  National  Temperance 
Society  in  1826,  the  Puritan  conscience  had  been  growing  tender  with 
reference  to  moral  issues.  The  Missouri  Compromise  of  1820  shocked  the 
country  into  a  quarter  century  of  deepening  interest  to  which  such  men 
as  Lyman  Beecher  and  Leonard  Bacon  largely  contributed.  In  1832 
Garrison  began  to  publish  the  Liberator.  In  1833  the  American  Anti- 
Slavery  Society  was  founded.  By  1837  it  had  1,200  auxiliaries  and  125,- 
000  members.  Not  alone  in  such  a  free  community  as  the  Oberlin  of 
that  day,  but  all  over  Congregational  territory,  unending  debates  went 
to  the  very  roots  of  Christian  principles  and  practice.  There  were  men 
and  women,  here  and  there,  like  John  G.  Fee  of  Kentucky  or  Oliver  Emer¬ 
son  of  Iowa,  who  began  to  question  the  legitimacy  of  drawing  salaries  paid 
by  any  of  the  great  missionary  or  associated  Boards,  since  none  of  them 
was  ready  to  take  a  position  of  unequivocal  opposition  to  slavery.  In  1833 
the  New  Haven  Anti-Slavery  Society  declared  for  immediate  abolition. 
A  strong  minority  demanded  that  the  parent  Society  take  the  same  posi¬ 
tion.  Hence  in  1840  the  milder  group  organized  The  American  and  Foreign 
Anti-Slavery  Society.  Congregational  clergymen  and  laymen  were  quite 
consistently  hostile  to  slavery,  but  they  were  slow  to  identify  their  two  great 
missionary  organizations  or  the  other  national  societies  with  that  particu¬ 
lar  issue.  In  1839  a  group  of  negroes  was  kidnapped  from  the  Mendi 
coast  and  sold  into  Cuban  slavery.  Some  of  them  escaped  in  a  sloop  which 
was  wrecked  on  the  coast  of  Long  Island.  Forty-four  were  captured  and 
confined  in  the  New  Haven  jail,  where  Professor  Gibbs  of  Yale  succeeded 
in  identifying  their  place  of  origin  and  in  getting  their  story.  A  committee, 
known,  from  the  name  of  the  sloop,  as  the  Amistad  Committee,  was  formed 
to  care  for  these  hapless  people,  to  afford  them  protection  and  to  repa¬ 
triate  them  when  practicable.  In  1841  the  United  States  Supreme  Court 
set  them  free,  whereupon  they  were  committed  to  the  instruction  of  Rev. 
(afterwards  Professor)  George  E.  Day,  then  of  Farmington,  Conn.,  and 
placed  under  the  responsible  care  of  the  newly  organized  Union  Missionary 
.Society  of  Hartford.  The  Committee  asked  the  American  Board  to  add 
a  Mendi  Mission  to  its  two  African  missions  already  under  way,  making  it 
an  anti-slavery  mission,  but  without  success.  Hence,  in  1842,  the  Com¬ 
mittee  merged  with  the  Union  Missionary  Society,  which  founded  the 
mission  by  sending  two  white  missionaries,  James  Steele  and  William  Ray¬ 
mond  of  Oberlin,  with  the  thirty-nine  remaining  repatriates.  By  1848 
fifteen  missionaries  had  joined  the  mission,  all  from  Oberlin;  eight  had 
died. 

The  action  of  the  Board  aroused  many  protests  and  led  in  1844  and  1845 
to  extended  debates  at  the  annual  meetings.  It  was  the  judgment  of  such 
men  as  Noah  Porter,  Mark  Hopkins,  Calvin  E.  Stowe,  Leonard  Woods 
and  Leonard  Bacon  that  the  work  of  the  Board  could  not  be  subordinated 
to  or  jeopardized  by  any  particular  moral  issue,  however  important. 
Yet  the  feeling  of  other  good  and  godly  men  grew  beyond  repression. 
At  Albany,  in  September,  1846,  “  friends  of  Bible  missions  ”  met  and 
organized  the  American  Missionary  Association  “  for  the  propagation  of  a 
pure  and  free  Christianity  from  which  the  sins  of  caste,  polygamy,  slave¬ 
holding  and  the  like  shall  be  excluded.”  The  Association  absorbed  or 
affiliated  along  with  their  missions  three  active  organizations,  the  Union 
Missionary  Society,  a  recently  organized  Committee  for  West  Indian 
Missions  at  work  in  Jamaica,  and  the  Western  Evangelical  Missionary 
Society,  founded  in  1843  by  the  Western  Reserve  Association  to  support 


20 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


a  group  of  Oberlin  students  in  work  among  the  Ojibway  Indians.  The 
Association  was  not  a  Congregational  organization,  but  from  the  outset 
Congregational  influence  was  predominant  in  its  management.  Professor 
George  Whipple  of  Oberlin  was  made  Corresponding  Secretary  in  1847, 
and  remained  an  honored  leader  for  thirty  years.  In  1850  the  Association 
could  report  twelve  missionaries  and' five  missions,  the  Mendi  Mission  in 
West  Africa,  the  encouragement  of  a  self-supporting  missionary  family  in 
the  Sandwich  Islands,  a  well  supported  work  in  Jamaica,  a  mission  in  Siam, 
transferred  by  the  American  Board  because  the  two  missionaries,  one  of 
whom  was  Rev.  Dr.  D.  B.  Bradley,  were  in  full  sympathy  with  the  posi¬ 
tion  of  the  Association,  and  a  mission  to  the  Ojibway  Indians  of  Minnesota. 
Moreover  the  needs  of  colored  refugees  in  Canada  were  being  met.  In 
1853  a  work  was  begun  in  California  for  the  “  Chinese  and  other  foreign¬ 
ers,”  and  in  1854  for  the  Copts  of  Egypt.  At  the  same  time  a  “  Home  De¬ 
partment  ”  had  been  established  from  the  outset  to  work  for  home  mis¬ 
sions  through  those  missionaries,  like  John  G.  Fee,  who  wished  “  to  bear 
clear  testimony  against  slavery  and  caste.”  Berea  College,  which  began 
its  life  in  1858,  embodied  the  ideals  of  this  remarkable  man.  In  1860 
the  Association  had  over  a  hundred  home  missionaries  on  its  roll,  fifteen 
of  them  in  the  slave  states  or  in  Kansas.  Thus  the  young  Association  had 
developed  a  limited  but  widespread  and  thoroughly  useful  work.  It  gave 
a  positive  Christian  expression  to  the  moral  earnestness  of  many.  Those 
who  were  dissatisfied  with  the  older  organizations  were  able  to  use  it  as  the 
channel  of  their  benevolences.  For  many  years  Oberlin  furnished  most  of 
its  missionaries.  In  1857  the  Avery  legacy  of  $100,000  as  a  “  perpetual 
fund  to  disseminate  Christianity  among  the  black  and  colored  races  of 
Africa  ”  seemed  to  set  a  seal  of  public  approval  on  what  it  had  achieved. 


XI 


The  Development  of  Foreign  Missionary  Principles  and 

Policies  (1851-1880) 

The  quarter  century  beginning  about  1851  was  one  of  constant  discussion 
and  bold  experiment  along  lines  of  foreign  missionary  policy.  By  the  end 
of  the  period  the  essential  principles  of  mission  management  as  practiced 
today  had  been  debated  and  adopted.  The  meetings  of  the  American 
Board  became  great  inspirational  assemblies  which  mightily  stirred  its 
constituency,  which,  by  1880,  had  become  rather  distinctively  Congrega¬ 
tional. 

During  these  decades  the  Board  steadily  enlarged  its  borders.  In  1851 
the  Arcot  district  in  India  was  entered  as  the  fifth  enterprise  in  that  great 
area.  The  opportunities  afforded  by  the  opening  Chinese  Empire  were 
rapidly  seized.  Shanghai  was  occupied  in  1854,  Tientsin  entered  by  Dr. 
Blodget  in  1860,  Peking  in  1862,  Kalgan  in  1865,  Tungchow  in  1867, 
Paotingfu  in  1873  and  Shaowu  in  1877.  Chauncey  Goodrich,  Henry 
Porter  and  Arthur  H.  Smith  began  their  many  decades  of  leadership  during 
these  years.  An  advance  from  the  Sandwich  Islands  to  Micronesia  was 
made  in  1852.  At  Salonica  a  mission  for  Jews,  begun  in  1849,  was 
maintained  for  seven  years  but  found  impracticable.  In  the  Turkish 
Empire  not  only  was  a  new  mission  for  Syrians  founded  at  Mosul,  but 
also  the  whole  missionary  program  was  reorganized  and  extended,  the 
territorial  organization  of  today  being  practically  established.  Two 
noteworthy  forward  movements  took  place,  the  entrance  into  Japan  in 
1869,  when  Daniel  Crosby  Greene  landed  at  the  newly  opened  village-port 
of  Kobe,  and  the  initiation  of  work  in  Papal  lands,  in  Spain,  Austria  and 
Mexico  in  1872,  with  an  ineffectual  attempt  in  Italy  in  1873.  This  latter 
enterprise  was  due  to  the  direct  appeal  of  many  Congregational  churches: 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


21 


which  had  been  contributing  for  many  years  to  the  work  of  the  American 
and  Foreign  Christian  Union,  but  were  dissatisfied  with  its  policy. 

Mission  enterprises  were  dropped  or  transferred  as  well  as  begun.  Siam 
had  been  transferred  to  the  American  Missionary  Association  in  1850. 
In  1857,  when  the  Reformed  churches  withdrew  to  organize  a  Board  of  their 
own,  it  was  given  the  Amoy  and  Arcot  missions,  which  had  been  virtually 
manned  for  some  years  by  its  people.  In  1870,  when  the  new  school 
Presbyterians  determined  to  work  for  foreign  missions  through  the  Pres¬ 
byterian  Board  of  Foreign  Missions,  it  was  assigned  the  work  for  the  Seneca 
and  Ojibway  Indians,  the  Nestorian  mission,  the  Gaboon  mission  and  the 
Syrian  mission.  The  Sandwich  Islands  mission  was  given  up  in  1870; 
the  Canton  mission  had  been  closed  and  its  property  sold  by  1868,  and,  for 
various  reasons,  all  Indian  missions  except  that  to  the  Sioux  were  abandoned. 
Thus  about  1880  the  Board  was  left  with  missions  to  India,  Ceylon,  China, 
Japan,  the  Turkish  Empire,  South  Africa,  Micronesia,  Japan,  Papal  lands 
and  Mexico. 

The  problems  and  policies  of  these  missions  were  grappled  by  a  remark¬ 
able  group  of  missionary  statesmen.  At  the  home  base  were  Rufus  Ander¬ 
son,  Selah  B.  Treat,  Nathaniel  G.  Clark,  Pres.  Hopkins,  Dr.  A.  C.  Thomp¬ 
son,  Elbridge  Torrey  and  Alpheus  Hardy.  On  the  field  were  such  men  as 
Cyrus  Hamlin,  Daniel  Bliss,  C.  H.  Wheeler,  T.  C.  Trowbridge  and  J.  K. 
Greene  in  Turkey,  Hiram  Bingham  and  E.  T.  Doane  in  Micronesia,  Henry 
Blodget  and  Charles  Hartwell  in  China,  O.  H.  Gulick,  Daniel  C.  Greene  and 
*  J.  D.  Davis  in  Japan,  Eurotas  P.  Hastings  and  Thomas  Smith  in  Ceylon, 
John  E.  Chandler  and  William  Tracy  in  Madura,  Samuel  B.  Fairbank, 
Lemuel  Bissell  and  Allen  Hazen  among  the  Mahrattas. 

In  1854-55  Secretary  Anderson  and  Dr.  A.  C.  Thompson  constituted  a 
deputation  to  India  and  Ceylon  to  discuss  and  determine  fundamental 
questions  of  future  mission  policy.  The  Prudential  Committee  had  become 
alarmed  because  the  missionary  institutions  in  India  for  the  training  of 
students  in  Western  learning  seemed  to  be  producing  scholars  and  national 
leaders  in  abundance,  but  comparatively  few  candidates  for  Christian 
service.  This  seemed  a  misuse  of  consecrated  money.  As  matters  were 
working  the  natural  village  leaders  were  apparently  being  educated  out  of 
village  service.  The  Committee  was  also  concerned  over  the  slow  develop¬ 
ment  of  native  churches.  The  deputation  brought  about  a  thorough 
educational  reorganization,  which  affected  policies  in  the  Turkish  Empire 
as  well  as  in  India  and  Ceylon.  It  dropped  or  altered  the  institutions  for 
higher  learning  so  that  provision  was  made  for  the  education  of  those  only 
who  were  training  for  Christian  service,  and  that  mainly  through  the 
vernacular.  At  the  same  time  it  did  provide  for  a  village  school  system  and 
it  unified  and  organized  the  evangelistic  attack.  This  withdrawal  from 
educational  leadership  was  bitterly  deplored  by  many  on  the  field  and  at 
home.  At  the  Annual  Meeting  of  1856,  however,  the  new  policies  were 
established  by  general  concurrence.  From  the  perspective  of  today  it  is 
evident  that  a  middle  ground  should  have  been  taken.  The  deputation  took 
away  from  its  missions  a  leadership  and  a  means  of  influence  which  they 
never  regained.  The  wonderful  group  of  influential  institutions  of  higher 
learning  on  the  field  in  which  Congregationalists  take  just  pride  today 
was  inaugurated  under  the  pressure  of  Christian  constituencies  and  not 
in  pursuance  of  the  Board’s  stated  policy. 

The  deputation’s  other  principle  established  Secretary  Anderson’s  place 
as  a  missionary  statesman  of  the  first  rank,  —  original,  bold,  constructive. 
He  shared  with  Henry  Venn  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  the  honor  of 
formulating  the  slogan  “  a  self-supporting,  self-propagating,  self-governed 
church.”  He  disbelieved  in  missionary  paternalism.  He  insisted  upon 
the  wisdom  of  a  policy  which  encouraged  the  assumption  of  self-support 
by  mission  congregations,  the  use  of  nationals  as  pastors  and  the  under¬ 
taking  of  responsibility  for  the  further  spread  of  Christianity.  Such  a 


22 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


statesmanlike  policy,  however,  meant  trained  leaders  of  nation-wide  stand¬ 
ing  and  of  real  culture  and  schools  capable  of  producing  them;  hence  it 
eventually  forced  a  reconsideration  of  the  educational  scheme,  and  a 
return  to  the  early  policy  which  Dr.  Anderson  had  repudiated.  The 
colleges  which  began  to  appear  on  mission  soil  under  independent  yet 
friendly  auspices  were  encouraged.  In  1863  Robert  College  was  founded 
at  Constantinople,  under  the  leadership  of  Cyrus  Hamlin,  and,  one  year 
later,  Syrian  Protestant  College  at  Beirut.  In  the  next  decade  a  group  of 
institutions  was  established  with  a  close  relation  to  the  Board  yet  in¬ 
dependently  endowed,  such  as  Jaffna  College  in  Ceylon  (1872),  Central 
Turkey  College  at  Aintab  (1874),  the  Doshisha  in  Japan  (1875)  and  Eu¬ 
phrates  College  at  Harpoot  in  Turkey  (1878).  These  colleges  by  their 
quick  success  settled  forever  the  question  of  the  legitimacy  of  such  institu¬ 
tions  and  of  the  whole  organized  attack  through  first-rate  education  on 
the  superstition,  ignorance  and  entrenched  leadership  of  oriental  lands. 

Another  important  advance  in  home  base  and  field  organization  was 
made  in  this  quarter  century  against  much  opposition  and  misunderstand- 
ng  through  the  splendid  leadership  of  Mrs.  Albert  Bowker  and  her  gifted 
associates  all  over  the  country.  Encouraged  by  the  success  of  the  Woman’s 
Union  Missionary  Society  of  America,  organized  in  1860,  they  argued 
that  the  women  of  the  churches  should  organize  in  order  to  work  for  the 
women  and  the  children  of  mission  areas  through  the  enlistment  and 
support  of  young  women  untrammelled  by  home  duties.  Very  few  such 
women  had  been  commissioned  by  the  Board,  and  most  of  these  for  the’ 
organization  of  colleges  like  Mount  Holyoke  abroad.  In  January,  1868, 
The  Woman’s  Board  of  Missions  was  organized,  followed  in  October  by 
the  Board  of  the  Interior,  and,  six  years  later,  by  the  Board  of  the  Pacific. 
These  Boards,  by  a  system  of  “  Branches,”  each  grouping  a  number  of 
related  churches  with  their  complement  of  women’s  missionary  societies, 
young  people’s  organizations  and  mission  bands,  developed  a  remarkably 
efficient  scheme  of  organization.  They  have  sent  to  the  foreign  field  a 
group  of  women  who  have  nobly  maintained  the  traditions  of  Maria  Ogden 
in  Hawaii,  Eliza  Agnew  in  Ceylon,  Myra  Proctor  at  Aintab  and  Fidelia 
Fiske  at  Urumia.  To  the  genius  and  insight  of  these  leaders,  many 
constructive  advances  have  been  due.  The  full  significance  of  these 
organizations  in  making  articulate  the  proper  share  of  women  in  the 
missionary  program  was  slowly  recognized,  but  they  have  become  indis¬ 
pensable  factors  in  wise  administration  and  effective  progress. 

A  testing  of  the  strength  of  the  Board  came  with  the  withdrawal  from 
federation  in  1857  of  the  Reformed  churches  and  the  uniting  in  1870  of 
the  New  School  Presbyterian  churches  with  the  Foreign  Board  of  the 
Presbyterian  Church.  These  withdrawals  were  deplored  at  first,  since  they 
diminished  by  a  third  the  Board’s  resources.  In  the  end  they  constituted 
a  challenge  to  each  group  of  churches  which  was  nobly  met.  Between 
1870  and  1878  the  missionaries  of  the  American  Board  increased  from 
two  hundred  and  forty-seven  to  three  hundred  and  forty-nine.  About 
one  hundred  new  places  were  occupied,  with  a  great  gain  of  churches. 
The  American  Board  thus  became  essentially  a  Congregational  organiza¬ 
tion. 

This  generation,  virtually  spanned  by  the  sane,  dignified  presidency 
of  Dr.  Mark  Hopkins,  commanding  of  presence  and  wise  in  counsel,  and 
the  constructive  leadership  of  Rufus  Anderson,  Selah  B.  Treat  and  Nathan¬ 
iel  G.  Clark,  was  concluding  in  1879  with  a  necessity  of  disheartening  re¬ 
trenchment  because  of  conditions  at  home.  Then  the  unanticipated  re¬ 
ceipt  of  the  great  Otis  legacy  opened  the  way  for  educational  advance,  for 
substantial  reenforcement  of  all  mission  service,  and  for  fresh  pioneering, 
affording  the  Board  and  its  devoted  missionaries  a  fresh  opportunity  and 
a  renewing  of  zeal. 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


23 


XII 

The  Expansion  of  Home  Missionary  Agencies  (1852-1865) 

The  Albany  convention  of  1852,  the  first  really  representative  gathering 
of  Congregationalists  since  the  Cambridge  Synod  two  centuries  earlier, 
abolished  the  Plan  of  Union  and  cleared  the  way  for  a  free  denominational 
advance.  Two  decades  of  experience  had  shown  that  the  flexibleness  and 
catholicity  of  Congregationalism  made  it  an  admirable  and  frictionless 
religious  agency  among  the  varying  creeds  and  races  of  the  home  frontier. 

This  convention  was  profoundly  stirred  by  the  appeal  of  pioneer  minis¬ 
ters  in  the  Middle  West  who  asked  aid  in  completing  their  houses  of  wor¬ 
ship.  The  best  way  of  meeting  this  need  was  a  topic  of  general  discussion. 
Challenged  by  an  offer  of  $10,000,  the  convention  authorized  the  raising 
of  a  church  building  fund.  Sixty-two  thousand  dollars  came  from  the 
churches  in  response,  a  sum  which  assisted  in  completing  two  hundred  and 
thirty  churches.  On  May  11,  1853,  the  society,  now  known  as  The  Con¬ 
gregational  Church  Building  Society,  was  organized  in  the  Broadway 
Tabernacle  in  New  York,  under  the  name  of  the  American  Congregational 
Union.  Its  purpose  was  to  promote  spiritual  unity,  fellowship  and  under¬ 
standing  among  Congregationalists,  as  well  as  to  cooperate  with  weaker 
churches  in  building  meeting-houses  and  parsonages.  In  good  Congrega¬ 
tional  fashion  some  objected  to  this  last  proposal  as  interfering  with 
Congregational  freedom.  But  the  influence  of  Leonard  Bacon,  Richard 
Salter  Storrs  and  others  overcame  such  objections.  The  work  developed 
slowly.  In  the  third  year  the  receipts  from  the  churches  were  but  $560.26. 
In  the  fifteenth  year  only  five  hundred  and  eleven  churches  contributed 
to  the  treasury  of  this  Society.  But  under  the  leadership  of  such  men  as 
Ray  Palmer  and  L.  H.  Cobb  it  gradually  justified  its  place  as  a  welcome  and 
indispensable  ally  of  the  Home  Missionary  Society.  In  1892,  that  its 
name  might  more  clearly  indicate  its  work,  the  Union  became  the  Church 
Building  Society.  The  splendid  legacy  of  J.  H.  Stickney  enabled  it  to 
develop  a  large  loan  fund  to  be  used  with  its  grants.  In  sixty-seven  years  it 
has  used  more  than  nine  million  dollars  in  completing  more  than  five  thou¬ 
sand  churches. 

The  Massachusetts  Sabbath  School  Society  was  encouraged  by  the 
Albany  convention  to  put  workers  into  the  western  field  to  promote 
Sunday-school  development  and  the  use  of  good  literature.  In  1853  it 
appointed  four  field  workers,  the  forerunners  of  its  large,  active  and  com¬ 
petent  staff  of  subsequent  years. 

With  the  virtual  federation  of  these  three  home  organizations  for  the 
splendid  task  of  multiplying  the  churches  of  the  Pilgrim  order  threefold 
in  half  a  century,  Congregationalism  was  reborn  in  the  newer  states  of  the 
central  West  and  of  the  Coast.  Dr.  G.  H.  Atkinson  in  1848  had  reached 
Oregon  after  an  18,000  miles  journey  via  Cape  Horn  and  Honolulu  only  to 
hear  of  the  tragic  Whitman  massacre.  He  found  four  Congregational 
ministers  and  two  little  churches,  but  began  a  service  of  forty  years  as 
pastor  and  as  general  missionary,  as  founder  of  churches,  schools,  acade¬ 
mies  and  pre-collegiate  institutions,  as  promoter  of  social,  commercial, 
educational  and  religious  development,  which,  measured  by  the  loftiest 
standards  of  true  citizenship,  gave  him  a  recognition  at  his  death  as  “  Ore¬ 
gon’s  most  eminent  citizen.”  From  1849  for  a  generation  two  devoted 
men,  Dr.  S.  H.  Willey  and  Dr.  J.  H.  Warren,  were  the  leaders  of  the  slower 
development  in  California.  In  the  central  West,  Ohio,  Michigan  and  Il¬ 
linois  were  at  the  maximum  of  activity,  while  Iowa,  Wisconsin,  Minnesota 
and  Kansas  were  pressing  hard  after  them.  Dr.  Truman  M.  Post  organized 
the  first  Congregational  church  in  Missouri  in  1852.  To  him  and  to  Dr. 
Henry  Hopkins  after  him  southwestern  Congregationalism  is  deeply  in¬ 
debted.  Chicago  Seminary  was  founded  in  1855  by  a  delegated  convention 


M 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


of  the  churches  of  the  central  area  to  give  their  territory  the  trained  leaders 
needed.  They  made  themselves  responsible  for  the  Seminary,  organizing 
the  Chicago  Theological  Seminary  Triennial  Convention.  The  new  enter¬ 
prise  was  thus  in  a  new  and  striking  sense  the  child  of  the  churches.  Under 
President  F.  W.  Fisk  and  Dr.  G.  S.  F.  Savage  it  quickly  made  its  place. 
Pacific  Seminary  followed  in  1869,  as  soon  as  a  trainable  constituency 
began  to  exist.  To  meet  the  exigencies  of  the  time  with  greater  efficiency 
the  Home  Missionary  Society  gradually  organized  its  work  in  the  West 
into  well-defined  districts,  often  the  limits  of  a  state,  under  the  expert 
superintendence  of  selected  leaders. 

In  1856  the  Society  definitely  declared  against  the  tolerating  of  slave¬ 
holders  in  missionary  churches  and  began  a  withdrawal  of  its  workers 
from  southern  territory,  which  left  only  one  representative  by  1857  and 
virtually  none  for  the  next  decade.  Notwithstanding  this  curtailment 
there  was  a  growth  in  free-state  territory  which  amply  balanced  the  loss. 

One  of  the  stirring  events  of  this  period  was  the  organization  at  the 
Yale  Divinity  School  and  the  departure  in  .1857  of  the  third  of  the  heroic 
pioneering  “  bands  ”  which  have  shed  such  luster  upon  our  Congregational 
name.  It  numbered  four  men,  Sylvester  S.  Storrs,  Grosvenor  C.  Morse, 
Roswell  D.  Parker  and  Richard  Cordley.  They  cast  their  lot  in  with  the 
New  England,  Illinois  and  Ohio  pioneers,  who  had  been  aided  by  the  Emi¬ 
gration  Society  to  enter  the  new  territory  of  Kansas  and  had  settled  near 
Lawrence  and  Topeka.  These  choice  pioneers  were  anxious  to  keep  the 
territory  loyal  to  free  principles.  Each  one  of  the  band  became  a  leader, 
Storrs  as  a  missionary  superintendent,  Parker  as  a  preacher,  Morse  as  an 
educator,  Cordley  as  a  pastor.  For  a  generation  they  were  the  moving 
spirits  of  every  great  religious  advance  in  the  state  and  helped  to  give  its 
eastern  half  a  distinctively  “  Pilgrim  ”  stamp. 

XIII 

The  New  Tasks  of  the  American  Missionary  Association  (1861-1883) 

The  American  Missionary  Association  was  founded  as  a  general  mis¬ 
sionary  agency  for  home  and  foreign  service,  to  be  utilized  by  those  who 
were  uncompromisingly  anti-slavery  in  conviction  and  practice.  Atten¬ 
tion  has  already  been  called  to  its  limited  yet  useful  and  varied  program 
for  its  first  fifteen  years  of  existence.  Candor  compels  the  statement  that 
during  this  early  period  the  Association  was  not  in  cordial  relations  with 
the  older  organizations,  due,  no  doubt,  in  good  part,  to  their  unfriendly 
attitude.  The  Civil  War,  however,  gave  the  Association  a  new  field  of 
missionary  service  for  which  its  heritage,  principles  and  policy  gave  it  a 
special  aptitude.  In  1861  the  freedmen  became  in  a  moment  a  Northern 
responsibility.  The  Association  was  quick  in  grasping  the  new  need  and 
supplying  the  Christian  response.  On  September  17th  of  that  year  it 
established  the  first  day  school  among  these  destitute  negroes,  uncon¬ 
sciously  laying  the  foundation  of  the  great  Hampton  of  today.  In  1867 
General  Armstrong,  then  at  Hampton  in  charge  of  the  refugees,  wrote  to 
the  Association  recommending  a  certain  estate  nearby  as  a  suitable  site  for 
a  permanent  educational  project  for  freedmen.  Given  timely  aid  by  the 
Avery  trustees,  the  Association  purchased  the  plantation,  planned  for  a 
school  and  persuaded  Armstrong  to  become  its  principal.  His  early 
knowledge  of  the  Hilo  Manual  Labor  School  for  Hawaiians  gave  him  the 
idea  of  the  type  of  education  which  is  most  generally  needed  by  an  un¬ 
developed  race. 

The  Association  followed  in  the  track  of  the  Union  armies,  setting  up 
schools.  In  1865  at  Boston  the  Congregational  Council  gave  a  hearty 
recognition  of  this  service  of  evangelization  and  education.  It  promoted 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM  25 

the  raising  of  a  fund  of  $250,000  for  the  work  among  freedmen  and  desig¬ 
nated  the  Association  as  providentially  prepared  to  administer  it.  Within 
seven  years  came  a  remarkable  development,  including  seven  chartered  in¬ 
stitutions  for  professional  training,  twenty  graded  schools,  sixty-nine 
common  schools  and  at  least  one  school  of  theology.  Despite  the  Ku- 
Klux  Clans  the  three  hundred  and  twenty  teachers  of  1865  became  five 
hundred  and  thirty-three  in  1870.  During  the  same  period  churches  were 
planted  among  the  negroes  and  churches  and  schools  among  the  mountain 
whites.  Hampton  soon  became  independent  of  direct  aid  from  the  As¬ 
sociation,  and  Tuskegee,  the  child  of  Hampton,  was  never  its  ward;  but 
the  general  plan  of  cultural,  professional  and  vocational  training  which 
has  proven  such  a  success  in  affording  undeveloped  peoples  their  rightful 
chance  of  growth  has  been  due  in  no  small  degree  to  the  experience  gained 
by  Association  leaders  during  the  fifteen  years  which  followed  the  war. 
The  emphasis  of  the  Association  has  been  laid  upon  cultural  and  pro¬ 
fessional  education,  partly  because  of  the  need  of  leaders  for  the  colored 
race,  partly  because  thorough  vocational  instruction  requires  vast  ex¬ 
penditures.  Fisk,  Atlanta,  Talladega,  Tougaloo,  Straight  and  Tillotson 
have  justified  this  policy.  Howard  University  deserves  mention  as  the 
virtual  child  of  the  First  Congregational  Church  of  Washington,  D.  C. 
Founded  in  1867  by  General  O.  O.  Howard,  long  its  president,  and  with  a 
series  of  distinguished  executives  who  have  been  drawn  from  Congrega¬ 
tional  ranks,  it  has  become  the  largest  and  best  equipped  institution  for  the 
higher  education  of  the  negro  in  North  America  or  the  world. 

The  pressure  of  the  Association’s  expanding  work  for  the  colored  race 
caused  it  to  withdraw  gradually  from  foreign  missionary  service.  In 
1873  its  work  in  the  Sandwich  Islands  was  given  up;  in  Jamaica  its  schools 
were  soon  after  transferred  to  the  government  and  its  churches  to  the 
Baptists.  In  1874  the  mission  to  Siam  was  ended.  In  1883  the  Mendi 
mission  was  transferred  to  the  United  Brethren,  while  the  mission  to  the 
Sioux  Indians  was  taken  over  from  the  American  Board.  These  measures 
gave  the  Association  a  constituency  of  negroes,  mainly  in  the  Southland, 
of  Orientals  on  the  Pacific  coast  and  of  North  American  Indians,  to  which 
in  1884  was  added  the  mountain  people  of  the  Southland.  It  thus  became 
a  specialized  agency  of  the  churches  for  dealing  with  the  backward  popula¬ 
tions  under  the  American  flag  and  for  those  Orientals  or  Latin  Americans 
temporarily  living  in  the  United  States,  whose  disabilities  made  them  de¬ 
pendent  on  Christian  sympathy  and  aid. 

XIV 

Home  Missions  after  the  Civil  War  (1865-1880) 

The  close  of  the  Civil  War  initiated  a  wave  of  western  migration  due  in 
part  to  the  liberal  homesteading  legislation  of  Congress,  in  part  to  the  rapid 
building  of  railways  and  in  part  to  a  great  increase  of  immigration.  Con¬ 
gregational  missionary  agencies  followed  hard  upon  the  heels  of  these 
pioneers  to  Kansas,  Nebraska,  California,  Colorado  and  some  parts  of  the 
Northwest.  Joseph  Ward  entered  Yankton  in  1868;  Col.  J.  D.  Davis 
(later  of  Japan)  and  Josiah  Strong  were  at  Cheyenne  soon  after.  The  first 
churches  of  our  order  at  Denver  and  at  Boulder  were  organized  in  1864, 
that  at  Colorado  Springs  in  1874.  These  were  years  of  college  planting, 
Washburn  in  Kansas  (1865),  Carleton  in  Minnesota  (1866),  Doane  in  Ne¬ 
braska  (1872),  Drury  in  Missouri  (1873)  and  Colorado  College  (1874), 
each  with  the  missionary  motive.  The  New  West  Education  Commission 
was  organized  in  1879  at  Chicago,  because  the  American  College  and 
Education  Society  at  Boston,  which  had  absorbed  in  1874  the  College 
Society  of  1843,  though  national  in  scope,  interpreted  its  charter  as  forbid- 


26 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


ding  it  to  use  its  funds  for  the  support  of  other  than  college  or  theological 
education.  It  also  declined  to  hold  itself  responsible  for  developing  the 
educational  policy  of  the  denomination.  This  decision  seems  today  an 
error  of  judgment.  An  aggressive  society  would  have  found  a  way  to 
shape  a  definite  national  policy  of  educational  advance  through  Christian 
academies  and  colleges.  President  Tenney  of  Colorado  College  and  Rev. 
Charles  R.  Bliss,  who  had  seen  the  urgent  need  of  planting  a  true  Christian 
civilization  in  Utah  and  the  adjacent  states  through  Christian  academies, 
which  were  the  only  available  means  of  coping  with  the  menace  of  Mormon- 
ism  and  of  Jesuit  power,  would  not  be  denied.  They  vainly  approached 
the  Home  Missionary  Society  for  favorable  support  and  at  last  organized 
the  Commission  with  Dr.  Frederick  A.  Noble  as  its  president  and  Mr. 
Bliss  as  its  secretary. 

During  these  years  the  Home  Missionary  Society  was  very  aggressive, 
both  in  New  England,  where  it  maintained  three  hundred  and  twenty- 
seven  missionaries,  and  in  the  West,  notably  in  Kansas,  Nebraska,  Minne¬ 
sota  and  California,  where  it  had  six  hundred  and  twenty-two.  In  1880 
it  had  four  negro  missionaries  and  held  regular  services  for  immigrants  of 
Welsh,  German,  French  and  Swiss  extraction. 

The  territory  of  Dakota  was  a  prize  worth  working  for  in  the  period  from 
1866  to  statehood  in  1889.  The  heroic  services  of  Joseph  Ward-,  the 
virtual  founder  of  South  Dakota,  and  of  Stewart  Sheldon,  its  general  mis¬ 
sionary,  may  not  soon  be  forgotten.  Their  leadership  inspired  the  fourth 
historic  “  band  ”  to  volunteer  for  service  in  1880.  A  group  of  nine  Yale 
Divinity  School  graduates,  aroused  by  the  stirring  call  of  one  of  their 
number  who  had  spent  a  summer  on  the  Dakota  field,  offered  themselves 
for  home  mission  work  in  that  rapidly  settling  region.  Seven  of  these 
came  from  states  which  had  been  home  missionary  fields  a  generation  before. 
Three  of  them  are  still  valued  Congregational  leaders. 

The  New  South,  created  by  the  outcome  of  the  war,  provided  a  host  of 
fresh  missionary  problems  for  the  two  societies  undertaking  home  mis¬ 
sionary  responsibility.  The  aftermath  of  racial  conflicts  drew  a  line  of 
demarcation  between  work  among  the  whites  and  that  among  the  negroes, 
which  led  to  a  tacit  division  along  racial  lines,  unfortunate  and  un-Congre- 
gational  but  apparently  justified  by  sheer  necessity.  The  share  of  the 
Home  Missionary  Society  in  the  new  Southland  was  slowly  assumed. 
With  the  development  of  manufacturing,  the  building  of  railways  and  the 
rush  of  immigration  from  the  North  and  West  there  were  educational  and 
religious  needs  to  be  met  which  challenged  our  churches.  This  growth  in 
Florida,  Texas,  Georgia  and  Alabama  began  in  the  seventies.  Its  moderate 
extension  throughout  the  southern  belt  has  been  the  work  of  decades. 

This  period  witnessed  some  Sunday-school  experimenting.  The  Ameri¬ 
can  Doctrinal  Tract  Society  of  1832 36  became  in  1854  the  Congregational 
Board  of  Publication.  In  1868  this  Board  united  with  the  Massachusetts 
Sabbath  School  Society,  which  had  had  so  honorable  a  history,  to  form 
the  Congregational  Sabbath  School  and  Publishing  Society,  giving  to  the 
new  organization  a  clear  denominational  standing  and  a  national  field. 
In  1870  its  name  was  shortened  to  the  Congregational  Publishing  Society. 
In  1874,  under  the  influence  of  a  temporary  demand  for  unification,  the 
missionary  work  of  the  Society  was  transferred  to  the  American  Home 
Missionary  Society.  This  proved  to  be  a  disastrous  step,  almost  drying 
up  denominational  support  of  Sunday-school  extension  and  badly  crippling 
its  organization.  In  1882  the  National  Council  approved  a  restoration  of 
the  missionary  service  to  the  renamed  Congregational  Sunday-School  and 
Publishing  Society,  which  it  declared  to  have  “  a  field  peculiarly  its  own.” 
For  the  days  of  active  pioneering  which  yet  remained  this  judgment  met 
the  general  approval  of  the  Congregational  churches. 

36  Organized  in  1829  as  the  Doctrinal  Tract  and  Book  Society. 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


27 


XV 

Two  Stirring  Decades  Closing  the  Century  (1880-1900) 

In  1881  there  was  organized  at  Portland,  Maine,  by  a  Congregational 
pastor,  Francis  E.  Clark,  who  gleaned  his  idea  from  Horace  Bushnell’s 
“  Christian  Nurture,”  a  contributory  agency  to  missions  of  very  great 
value,  the  Young  People’s  Society  of  Christian  Endeavor,  which  has  been 
for  four  decades  all  over  the  Christian  world  a  potent  means  of  developing 
Christian  volunteers.  Only  five  years  later  at  Northfield,  Mass.,  the 
Student  Volunteer  Movement  sprang  into  being  as  a  perpetual  challenger 
of  student  life  for  missionary  service.  This  latter  organization  and  its 
corollary,  the  World’s  Student  Christian  Federation  of  1895,  have  been 
loyally  fostered  by  Congregationalists,  but  they  cannot  claim  them  as  their 
own. 

With  the  year  1880  the  American  Board  began  a  new  era  of  expansion. 
The  great  Otis  legacy  of  1879,  together  with  the  Swett  legacy  of  1884, 
making  a  joint  fund  of  $1,500,000,  used  until  1897  to  supplement  the  regu¬ 
lar  contributions  of  the  churches,  opened  the  way  for  strengthening, 
standardizing  and  enlarging  the  whole  range  of  foreign  activity.  In  1880 
the  West  Central  Africa  mission  was  founded  in  Angola  after  costing  the 
death  of  two  eminent  leaders,  Edward  P.  Smith,  formerly  Indian  Com¬ 
missioner,  sent  to  explore  the  field  by  the  American  Missionary  Associa¬ 
tion,  and  Rev.  John  O.  Means,  sent  later  by  the  American  Board,  —  both 
dying  on  the  Coast.  In  the  support  and  development  of  this  mission  Cana¬ 
dian  Congregationalists  who  organized  the  Canadian  Foreign  Missionary 
Society  in  1881  and  furnished  one  of  the  three  pioneer  missionaries,  have 
generously  shared.  In  1883  the  Shansi  mission  in  China  was  begun  by 
Oberlin  graduates.  In  1883  Kwangtung  province  was  reoccupied  in  China 
and  Northern  Mexico  entered  at  Chihuahua;  in  1883  East  Central  Africa 
was  entered  at  Inhambane  and  North  Japan  at  Niigata;  six  new  enter¬ 
prises  within  four  years. 

New  vigor  stirred  the  older  missions.  Japan,  after  ten  years  of  experi¬ 
ment  and  preparation,  had  a  period  of  remarkable  growth  under  the 
leadership  of  an  unusual  group  of  missionaries,  including  such  men  as  D.  C. 
Greene,  Jerome  D.  Davis,  John  H.  De  Forest  and  M.  L.  Gordon.  The 
year  1888  was  the  banner  year.  The  next  decade  developed  a  nationalistic 
spirit  in  the  empire  which  brought  about  a  decided  reaction.  After  Nee- 
sima’s  death  in  1890  the  Doshisha  was  temporarily  placed  on  a  non-Chris¬ 
tian  basis,  but  in  1898  full  cooperation  was  resumed,  assisted  by  the  firm 
yet  friendly  attitude  of  a  deputation  which  went  to  Japan  in  1896.  In 
China  the  first  decade  was  characterized  by  laying  foundations;  the 
Shansi  mission,  planned  at  Oberlin  in  1880,  and  wholly  manned  by  Oberlin 
students,  had  a  steady  growth;  the  second  decade  witnessed  an  expansion 
all  over  the  empire.  In  1898,  for  the  first  time  in  sixty-eight  years  —  a  fact 
by  no  means  creditable  to  our  administration  of  foreign  mission  interests  — 
a  deputation  headed  by  Secretary  Judson  Smith  visited  China,  affording 
not  a  little  encouragement.  In  Turkey  a  deputation  in  1883  allayed  a 
growing  source  of  disunion  and  promoted  an  unusual  growth,  which  was 
retarded  but  slightly  by  bitter  persecution  and  martyrdom  in  1893-5. 
This  calamity  forced  the  missionaries  to  undertake  a  work  of  general  relief 
and  of  the  care  of  orphans  that  has  developed  into  a  permanent  missionary 
agency.  In  Micronesia  in  1887  the  Spanish  showed  hostility  to  our  long- 
established  work,  but  were  displaced  after  the  close  of  the  Spanish- American 
War  (1899).  In  India  a  steady  growth  took  place,  while  in  Africa,  after 
some  vicissitudes,  an  unusual  advance  was  registered. 

These  years  were  noteworthy  for  the  alteration  of  the  rigid  practice  of 
the  Prudential  Committee  of  the  Board  regarding  the  religious  convictions 
of  its  missionaries.  The  “  Andover  Controversy  ”  raged  very  strenuously 


28 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


in  the  early  eighties  throughout  the  Board’s  constituency.  The  Prudential 
Committee  had  acted  as  an  ecclesiastical  court,  not  alone  rejecting  candi¬ 
dates  who  were  uncertain  regarding  probation  after  death,  but  also  de¬ 
clining  to  return  to  their  fields  such  missionaries  as  were  affected.  The 
issue,  personalized  in  the  case  of  one  missionary  whose  spirituality  and 
usefulness  could  not  be  gainsaid,  was  fought  out  at  annual  meetings  be¬ 
tween  1886  and  1893.  Three  honored  administrators,  when  no  longer 
upheld,  retired  in  1893  from  connection  with  the  Board,  but  the  principle 
became  established  for  all  time  that  missionaries  on  the  field  have  the  same 
freedom  of  thought  as  their  ministerial  brethren  at  home.  The  forceful 
personality  and  catholic  temper  of  President  Richard  S.  Storrs,  together 
with  the  keen  yet  irenic  statesmanship  of  Professor  George  P.  Fisher, 
went  far  in  assuring  this  happy  issue  of  a  divisive  controversy. 

Various  constitutional  betterments  were  made  by  the  Board  when  it 
added  the  president  and  vice-president  of  the  Board  to  the  Prudential 
Committee  ex-officiis  (1889),  placed  the  enlarged  Committee  on  a  basis  of 
limited  terms  of  service  (1888),  and  gave  state  and  district  Associations  of 
Congregational  churches  the  right  of  nominating  a  majority  of  the  greatly 
enlarged  corporate  membership  (1893).  In  1894  Dr.  E.  E.  Strong  was 
made  Editorial  Secretary  and  Dr.  James  L.  Barton  a  Corresponding  Secre¬ 
tary.  In  1896  “  cooperating  committees  ”  were  appointed  to  assist  in 
raising  the  large  annual  budget.  In  1899  the  “  Forward  Movement  ” 
initiated  the  policy,  which  has  proved  so  valuable,  of  the  support  of  mis¬ 
sionaries  by  individuals  and  churches. 

These  decades  made  havoc  of  some  of  the  great  leaders  of  earlier  years. 
In  1887  Dr.  Mark  Hopkins,  for  thirty  years  the  impartial,  benignant 
president  of  the  Board,  and  Alpheus  Hardy,  a  diligent  and  competent 
member  of  the  Prudential  Committee,  passed  away,  followed  in  1901  by 
Dr.  A.  C.  Thompson,  for  years  the  unquestioned  authority  on  Prudential 
Committee  transactions  and  on  the  history  of  missions.  In  1896  two 
famous  secretaries,  the  great-hearted,  intrepid  Clark  and  the  scholarly  and 
brilliant  Alden,  ceased  from  their  labors,  followed  in  1900  by  the  eloquent, 
fair-minded  Storrs,  who  for  ten  troubled  years  had  kept  the  constituency 
of  the  Board  together.  In  1899  the  noteworthy  administration  of  Presi¬ 
dent  Samuel  B.  Capen  began. 

The  two  decades  were  equally  eventful  for  home  missions.  Between 
1880  and  1893-97  the  missionary  force  of  the  Home  Missionary  Society 
was  doubled.  The  banner  year  was  1896,  when  2,038  missionaries  were  on 
the  roll  of  the  Society,  22  per  cent  in  New  England,  now  with  many  weak 
country  churches,  7  per  cent  in  the  Middle  States,  5  per  cent  in  the  South, 
6  per  cent  in  the  Southwest,  50  per  cent  in  the  West  and  10  per  cent  on 
the  Coast,  a  proportion  fairly  well  maintained  for  a  long  period  of  years. 
West  of  the  Missouri  the  Dakotas,  Colorado,  Southern  California,  Oregon 
and  Washington  were  given  especial  attention.  Between  1880  and  1900 
Washington  absorbed  twice  as  much  missionary  money  as  any  other  sec¬ 
tion.  Its  wonderful  appeal  enlisted  at  Yale  one  more  home  missionary 
“  band  ”  of  six  men  who  in  1890  set  their  faces  toward  the  growing  state. 
They  planned  a  close  fellowship  in  service  and  wrought  an  important  work 
together  under  many  hindrances.  All  are  still  active.  A  similar  develop¬ 
ment  was  going  on  in  the  New  South,  especially  in  Florida,  Georgia  and 
Alabama,  where  in  the  later  eighties,  under  the  leadership  of  Superintendent 
Sullivan  F.  Gale,  Congregationalism  again  began  to  get  a  foothold.  He 
helped  to  discover  the  Congregational  Methodists  of  Alabama  and  Georgia, 
and  added  many  of  their  congregations  to  our  constituency.  The  year 
1893  was  notable  because  the  Society  became  in  name  as  well  as  in  fact  the 
Congregational  Home  Missionary  Society,  and  because  the  Society  estab¬ 
lished  more  satisfactory  relations  with  its  growing  brood  of  self-supporting 
state  societies.  From  a  little  group  of  half  a  dozen  states  with  organiza¬ 
tions,  responsibilities  and  a  budget  of  their  own,  there  had  come  to  be 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM  2g 

more  than  twenty.  The  period  closed  with  the  entrance  into  Alaska  and 
Cuba. 

One  of  the  outstanding  home  missionary  developments  in  this  era  was 
in  connection  with  the  flood  of  immigration.  Its  rapidity  and  volume  up 
to  1870  had  been  surprising  but  not  alarming.  Those  who  came  over  the 
sea  were  quickly  Americanized.  But  by  1900  one-third  of  the  population 
of  the  United  States  was  of  foreign  parentage.  In  many  great  cities  and 
in  several  states  they  held  the  balance  of  power.  In  the  later  eighties  the 
type  of  immigrant  lowered.  To  some  extent  this  fact  altered  the  home 
missionary  impact.  The  Society’s  task  was  not  only  to  keep  up  with  the 
tide  of  settlement,  planting  the  seeds  of  a  Christian  society,  but  also  to 
stem  this  tide  of  ignorance  and  superstition.  In  1883  the  Society  organized 
three  foreign  departments  —  German,  Scandinavian  and  Slavic  —  under 
expert  superintendents.  The  Chicago  Theological  Seminary  had  already 
begun  the  special  training  of  leaders  for  such  work.  By  1900  the  gospel 
was  being  regularly  preached  by  its  missionaries  in  thirteen  different  tongues. 

Meanwhile  Congregational  women  who  since  earliest  times  had  been 
the  source  of  numberless  choice  “  barrels  ”  or  boxes,  and  who  in  New  Eng¬ 
land  had  been  pioneers  in  missionary  organization  among  women,  began 
to  organize  themselves  more  definitely  for  home  missionary  service.  The 
Minnesota  Woman’s  Home  Missionary  Union  was  formed  in  1872.  This 
was  followed  in  1880  by  the  formation  in  Boston  of  the  Woman’s  Home 
Missionary  Association  of  Massachusetts  and  Rhode  Island.  In  succeed¬ 
ing  years,  in  rapid  succession,  under  the  inspiring  leadership  of  Mrs.  H.  C. 
Caswell,  other  states  were  also  organized.  In  1883  both  the  Congregational 
Home  Missionary  Society  and  the  American  Missionary  Association 
established  Women’s  Departments,  to  serve  as  a  clearing  agency  for  the 
activity  of  these  Unions.  The  process  of  state  organization,  thus  begun, 
has  continued  until  there  are  now  thirty-seven  state  unions.  Unlike  the 
Woman’s  Boards,  the  Woman’s  Home  Missionary  Unions  established  no 
distinct  work  of  their  own,  but  contributed  directly  to  the  work  of  the  na¬ 
tional  homeland  societies,  maintaining  close  cooperative  relationships  with 
them  and  raising  a  definite  part  of  each  annual  budget.  Under  the  direc¬ 
tion  of  these  unions,  through  their  district  and  local  organizations,  im¬ 
portant  work  has  been  done  in  reaching  and  training  the  children  and  young 
people  of  our  churches  in  missionary  knowledge  and  service.  Nor  has 
their  “  labor  of  love  ”  in  the  preparation  of  barrels  ever  ceased.  The  rapid 
expansion  of  this  work  made  necessary  the  establishment  of  a  central  body 
to  represent  the  unions  in  all  matters  of  common  interest,  both  denomina¬ 
tionally  and  interdenominationally.  Accordingly  in  1905  the  Congrega¬ 
tional  Woman’s  Home  Missionary  Federation  was  organized,  to  be  the 
national  body  through  which  this  wide  range  of  home  missionary  activity 
among  our  women  should  find  common  expression,  and  by  which  it  should 
be  stimulated  to  increased  efficiency  and  service. 

In  1883  the  Church  Building  Society  undertook  to  raise  a  parsonage 
fund  of  $25,000  to  assist  small  churches  in  erecting  parsonages.  Dr. 
William  M.  Taylor,  the  pastor  of  the  Broadway  Tabernacle  Church,  who 
was  at  this  time  the  president  of  the  Society,  was  deeply  interested,  secur¬ 
ing  the  first  $5,000  from  his  own  congregation.  With  Secretary  L.  H. 
Cobb,  he  made  a  tour  of  the  leading  churches,  securing  the  whole  fund  in 
a  short  time.  This  fund  now  amounts  to  $260,957.  It  has  assisted  in 
erecting  about  fourteen  hundred  parsonages. 

In  1881  a  new  era  in  Sunday-school  development  began  with  the  elec¬ 
tion  of  Rev.  Albert  E.  Dunning  as  General  Secretary  of  the  Publication 
Society,  which  was  reestablished  in  1883  as  the  Sunday  School  and  Pub¬ 
lishing  Society,  the  Sunday-school  missionary  work  having  been  retrans¬ 
ferred  to  it  by  the  Home  Missionary  Society.  With  a  strong  force  of  super¬ 
intendents  and  missionaries,  the  work  of  the  Society  was  rapidly  extended 


30 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


throughout  the  whole  country.  At  the  same  time  it  began  to  publish 
Christian  literature  of  a  high  order. 

From  1880  to  1893  the  New  West  Education  Commission  did  heroic 
work,  chiefly  in  Utah  and  New  Mexico.  It  built  up  such  important  insti¬ 
tutions  as  Salt  Lake  College  and  Provo  and  Albuquerque  academies,  which 
had  an  important  share  in  shaping  the  educational  life  and  in  lifting  the 
educational  and  spiritual  ideals  of  states  and  communities  in  process  of 
formation.  Its  fourth  report  in  1884  exhibited  thirty-eight  schools,  sixty- 
two  teachers  and  two  thousand  nine  hundred  and  twenty-five  pupils. 
Above  all  it  demonstrated  the  value  of  the  Christian  academy  as  a  home 
missionary  agency.  Eventually  in  1893,  after  the  American  College  and 
Education  Society  had  obtained  a  broader  charter  and  a  new  and  shorter 
name,  and  the  growth  of  the  public  school  system  had  narrowed  the  sphere 
of  the  Christian  academy,  the  Commission  was  consolidated  with  the 
Society  under  one  management.  Between  1882  and  1897  ten  new  col¬ 
leges  and  several  Christian  academies  were  established.37 

The  American  Missionary  Association  pursued  an  undisturbed  course  of 
steady  development,  in  the  guidance  of  which  Dr.  M.  E.  Strieby,  Dr.  J.  E. 
Roy  and  Dr.  E.  C.  Cravath  won  permanent  distinction.  In  1884  the 
Association  came  to  a  definite  understanding  with  the  American  Home 
Missionary  Society  regarding  the  scope  of  each  home  society.  In  that 
same  year  it  began  schools  for  mountaineers.  The  Daniel  Hand  legacy 
of  more  than  a  million  dollars,  given  in  1888,  to  afford  opportunity  to  the 
colored  race,  by  a  man  who  had  made  his  fortune  in  the  South,  so  provided 
for  the  work  in  the  South  as  to  enable  the  Association  in  1890  to  extend 
its  work  to  the  Eskimos  of  Cape  Prince  of  Wales,  Alaska.  After  Porto 
Rico,  with  its  problems  of  illiteracy  and  poverty  inherited  from  centuries 
of  Spanish  misrule  and  neglect,  had  come  under  the  American  flag,  a  mis¬ 
sion  for  both  educational  and  church  work  was  founded  in  that  island  in 
1899.  All  other  phases  of  its  work  were  strengthened.  In  1898  in  com¬ 
mon  with  the  other  societies  it  adopted  the  policy  of  rotation  in  office  for 
its  Executive  Committee,  of  which  a  majority  were  to  be  laymen. 

The  one  undeveloped  objective  of  Congregational  missionary  states¬ 
manship  was  reached  in  1886,  when  the  National  Council  organized  the 
Congregational  Board  of  Ministerial  Relief  for  the  proper  care  of  those 
whose  lives  have  been  spent  in  heroic  missionary  service  or  in  country  parish 
work  at  a  mere  living  salary.  From  a  very  modest  beginning  this  work  of 
providing  for  the  veterans  of  the  cross  in  their  declining  years  has  steadily 
grown,  until  last  year  more  than  $100,000  was  distributed.  The  bequest 
of  Mrs.  D.  Willis  James  made  the  endowment  fund  more  than  a  million 
dollars. 

The  closing  decade  of  the  century  so  strongly  emphasized  the  denomina¬ 
tional  consciousness  that  in  1902,  half  a  century  after  the  Albany  Con¬ 
vention  and  seventy  years  after  Congregationalism  really  began  to  stretch 
its  wings,  several  of  the  home  missionary  organizations  altered  the  term 
“  American  ”  in  their  corporate  names  to  “  Congregational.”  In  1886 
also  the  national  societies  established  a  new  organ,  Congregational  Work, 
intended  to  circulate  widely  throughout  the  denomination  as  a  medium  of 
fresh  and  attractive  news  regarding  each  society.  It  continued  for  twenty- 
three  years. 

37  During  the  century  of  the  existence  of  the  various  organizations  represented  today  by 
the  Congregational  Education  Society,  sixty-two  colleges,  academies  and  schools  for 
training  have  been  founded  or  aided  and  10,250  students  have  been  aided  for  the  ministry, 
all  at  an  expenditure  of  approximately  $6,500,000. 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


31 


XVI 

A  Decade  of  Experimentation  (1900-1910) 

The  new  century  developed  much  unrest  among  the  churches  in  regard 
to  their  relations  with  the  seven  societies  which  had  come  to  be  recognized 
as  Congregational.  Six  of  these  organizations  were  in  reality  self-per¬ 
petuating;  two  of  the  six  even  regarded  their  constituencies  as  somewhat 
broader  than  the  Congregational  churches.  There  was  no  unwillingness 
to  permit  real  constituents  to  assist  in  shaping  missionary  policy,  but  a 
natural  hesitancy  about  surrendering  a  freedom  characteristic  of  Congre¬ 
gational  institutions  and  sanctioned  by  splendid  achievement.  The 
churches,  however,  steadily  pressed  the  idea  that  in  their  organized  capac¬ 
ity  they  should  assume  responsibility  for  their  own  missionary  work. 

In  1901  the  National  Council  at  Portland  endorsed  the  ideas  of  a  cor¬ 
porate  body  for  each  society,  elected  mainly  by  the  churches,  and  of  an 
annual  meeting  in  common,  a  joint  magazine  and  fewer  treasuries.  In 
1902  the  Home  Missionary  Society  arranged  to  have  its  controlling  mem¬ 
bership  elected  through  the  State  organizations.  In  1904  the  American 
Board  voted  to  secure  a  majority  of  its  corporate  membership  in  the  same 
way.  In  that  same  year  at  Des  Moines  the  seven  benevolent  societies 
held  their  annual  meetings  ‘in  connection  with  the  Council.  Two  years 
later  the  Home  Missionary  Society  adopted  a  new  constitution  completely 
reorganizing  its  relations  with  the  state  bodies  and  their  home  missionary 
interests.  It  created  a  responsible  directorate  chosen  mainly  by  the 
recognized  State  Conferences,  subject  to  the  review  of  the  Society  at  its 
annual  meeting,  provided  for  an  annual  apportionment  and  policy  meeting 
in  January,  placed  the  Executive  Committee  under  the  control  of  the 
directorate,  classified  the  participating  states  as  constituent  and  cooperat¬ 
ing  on  the  basis  of  complete  or  partial  self-support  of  all  home  missionary 
work,  and  included  city  missionary  organizations  as  an  affiliated  interest. 
Thus  in  its  eightieth  year  the  .Society  discovered  how  to  function  success¬ 
fully  for  the  nation  while  giving  full  play  to  local  responsibility  and  initia¬ 
tive  and  made  a  definite  forward  step  in  home  missionary  administration. 
In  1909  the  home  societies  established  The  American  Missionary  as  a  joint 
magazine.  In  that  same  year  in  a  “  Together  Campaign  ”  the  three  largest 
societies  were  freed  from  indebtedness.  During  the  decade  the  Reserve 
Legacy  plan  for  the  stabilizing  of  legacy  receipts,  begun  by  the  American 
Board  in  1900  under  the  name  of  the  Twentieth  Century  Fund,  and  the 
plan  of  annuity  endowments,  both  initiated  or  at  least  emphasized  under 
the  businesslike  leadership  of  President  Samuel  B.  Capen,  became  gen¬ 
erally  adopted  by  the  societies.  Dr.  Capen  brought  to  the  presidency  of 
the  Board  and  to  many  other  directorates  a  business  judgment  and  a 
friendly  but  forceful  and  strongly  spiritual  leadership  which  had  un¬ 
measured  value  for  the  missionary  interests  of  Congregationalism. 

For  the  American  Board  the  decade  opened  with  the  Boxer  uprising  in 
China,  compelling  a  sacrificial  outpouring  of  Christian  blood,  missionary 
and  national  alike,  that  proved  indeed  to  be  the  seed  of  the  church.  Before 
the  decade  had  closed  there  was  a  great  religious  advance  in  China,  shaped 
and  stimulated  by  the  great  Centenary  Conference  of  1907  at  Shanghai. 
In  1901  a  deputation  was  sent  to  India,  one  in  1903  to  Africa  and  one  in 
1907  to  China.  Their  reports  were  very  clarifying  and  productive.  The 
death  of  Dr.  Elias  Riggs  after  nearly  half  a  century’s  service  in  Turkey, 
the  capture  by  Bulgarian  bandits  of  Miss  Ellen  M.  Stone,  and  the  founding 
of  the  International  College  at  Smyrna  were  occurrences  of  1901.  In 
1902  the  Philippines  mission  in  Mindanao  was  begun.  The  interesting 
work  of  the  Yale  Foreign  Missionary  Society  at  Changsha,  China  was  be¬ 
gun  in  1903  by  Rev.  and  Mrs.  Laurence  Thurston,  who  were  followed  by 
Warren  Seabury  and  Brownell  Gage.  While  not  linked,  like  the  Oberlin- 


32 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


Shansi  movement,  to  the  American  Board,  the  Yale-in-China  project 
grew  out  of  the  earnest  plans  of  a  group  of  Congregational  students  and 
received  much  assistance  from  the  Board  at  the  start.  It  has  always 
been  managed  and  maintained  independently.  In  1905  the  Forward 
Movement,  initiated  in  1898,  was  absorbed  into  the  Home  Department 
as  an  established  method  of  procedure.  In  that  same  year  the  first  annual 
conference  for  newly  appointed  missionaries  was  held  by  the  Board. 

The  year  1906  witnessed  the  centennial  of  the  Haystack  prayer-meeting. 
It  gave  the  occasion  for  a  notable  review  of  the  century’s  missionary 
progress.  More  than  that,  it  witnessed  the  genesis  of  the  Laymen’s  Mis¬ 
sionary  Movement,  so  blessed  of  God  since  then  in  the  enlistment  of  men 
and  money  for  missions.  The  idea  was  born  in  the  mind  of  John  B. 
Sleman,  an  energetic  Congregational  layman  of  Washington,  D.  C.  Dr. 
Capen  warmly  seconded  his  suggestion  and  acted  as  the  chairman  of  the 
Movement  until  his  death.  In  1906  Dr.  Judson  Smith,  for  twenty-two 
years  a  secretary  of  the  Board,  ended  his  scholarly,  dignified  career.  In 
1908  the  United  Church  of  South  India,  composed  of  the  converts  of  three 
great  communions,  including  the  American  Board,  was  organized,  an 
epochal  forward  step  on  mission  soil. 

In  home  missionary  organization  the  decade  has  already  been  reviewed. 
Worthy  of  special  notice,  however,  because  of  Congregational  leadership 
and  cooperation,  are  the  development  of  the  Missionary  Education  Move¬ 
ment  in  1907  out  of  the  Young  People’s  Missionary  Movement  of  1902, 
the  organization  of  the  Federal  Council  of  the  Churches  of  Christ  in  Amer¬ 
ica  in  1908  and  of  the  Home  Missions  Council  in  that  same  year,  each 
of  significance  to  mission  efficiency  at  home  and  abroad.  In  1905  the 
Woman’s  Home  Missionary  Federation,  previously  referred  to,  was  organ¬ 
ized.  In  1910  Rev.  William  Salter  of  Iowa  passed  away,  the  last  survivor 
of  that  sturdy  and  heroic  band  who  planted  Congregationalism  firmly 
beyond  the  Mississippi  in  1843. 

The  American  Missionary  Association  held  in  1903  its  first  convention 
of  colored  Congregational  workers  in  the  Southland,  a  gathering  that 
quickly  proved  its  strategic  value  and  the  general  principle  that  a  race 
which  is  on  the  way  upward  can  be  used  with  wisdom  to  speak  for  itself 
in  the  formulation  of  wise  policies.  In  1906  an  educational  director  was 
given  the  task  of  reorganizing  the  educational  service  of  the  Association. 
In  1907  a  beginning  was  made  in  the  organization  of  distinctively  agricul¬ 
tural  high  schools,  one  for  each  Southern  state,  which  resulted  in  eight 
such  institutions  by  1910.  In  general  a  process  of  intensification  of  the 
whole  work  was  instituted.  A  partnership  with  the  Hawaiian  Evangelical 
Association  was  begun  by  the  American  Missionary  Association  in  1904. 
During  the  decade  the  work  for  mountain  whites  and  for  orientals  on  the 
Pacific  Coast  reached  marked  efficiency.  The  Atlanta  Theological  Semi¬ 
nary  was  opened  for  instruction  in  1901. 

A  notable  fact  of  the  decade  was  the  installation  in  charge  of  each  of  the 
societies  of  forward-looking,  able  executives  in  complete  sympathy  with 
the  slowly  formulating  plans  of  denominational  reorganization. 


XVII 

A  Decade  of  Reorganization  and  Realization  (1910-1920) 

At  no  stage  of  world  development  can  anyone  dare  to  hope  that  per¬ 
fection  has  been  attained.  It  is  true,  however,  beyond  a  doubt  that  the 
second  decade  of  the  twentieth  century  has  witnessed  a  remarkable  mis¬ 
sionary  advance  all  over  the  world  in  federation,  comity,  efficiency  and  the 
intensive  application  of  ideals  and  principles  to  mission  work. 

All  this  began  in  1910  with  the  great  missionary  conference  at  Edin- 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


33 


burgh,  Scotland,  which  led  the  way  to  a  federated  unity  never  before 
realizable  in  the  history  of  the  Church  catholic.  Its  work  was  supple¬ 
mented  and  forwarded  by  the  Congress  on  Christian  Work  in  Latin  America, 
held  at  Panama  in  February,  1916,  which  dealt  particularly  with  Latin 
American  interests  not  fully  represented  at  Edinburgh.  These  great 
ecumenical  gatherings  developed  a  spirit  of  cooperation  which  has  revolu¬ 
tionized  missionary  policies  and  prepared  the  way  for  rapidly  increasing 
efficiency  in  years  to  come.  Congregationalists  participated  gladly  with 
all  other  communions  in  furthering  these  gatherings  and  their  related  con¬ 
ferences  in  missionary  areas.  In  North  America  fresh  life  was  given  to 
the  Foreign  Missions  Conference,  organized  informally  in  1893  with  the 
hearty  support  of  Secretaries  Nathaniel  G.  Clark  and  Judson  Smith  and 
given  official  standing  in  1905,  so  that  it  became,  under  its  new  constitution 
of  1911,  an  organization  truly  representative  of  the  foreign  missionary 
interests  of  North  America  and  contributory  toward  the  scientific  develop¬ 
ment  of  missionary  policies.  In  that  same  year  in  December  the  Board  of 
Missionary  Preparation  held  its  first  annual  meeting  and  initiated  its  career 
of  serviceableness.  In  1912-13  were  held  the  eighteen  sectional  confer¬ 
ences  in  Asia  by  Dr.  Mott  and  his  associates,  and  in  1916  the  seven  regional 
conferences  in  Latin  America  which  succeeded  so  admirably  in  developing 
and  accelerating  the  process  of  federated  cooperation  in  missions  in  each 
great  area.  To  them  Congregationalists  everywhere  lent  hearty  support. 
The  decade  has  witnessed  the  steady  development  of  interdenominational 
organization,  of  union  enterprises,  of  friendly  adjustments  of  fields  and  of 
a  spirit  of  cooperation  which  rejoices  the  heart  of  every  true  follower  of 
the  Pilgrims. 

Congregationalists  at  home  have  been  preparing  to  do  their  share 
in  the  new  era.  On  the  one  hand  a  remarkable  group  of  institutions  for 
the  training  of  missionaries  is  being  developed  at  Hartford,  New  Haven, 
New  York,  Chicago,  Oberlin  and  Berkeley,  which  will  be  prepared  to 
answer  all  reasonable  demands  made  upon  them  in  the  future.  On  the 
other  hand  in  1913  the  National  Council,  by  its  adoption  at  Kansas  City 
of  a  new  constitution  which  made  it  truly  representative  of  the  Congrega¬ 
tional  churches  of  the  United  States  and  gave  it  a  continuous  existence, 
assumed  a  definite  responsibility  for  all  the  denominational  tasks.  It 
appointed  a  permanent  Commission  on  Missions  which  during  the  years 
ensuing  has  drawn  the  seven  national  societies  into  a  direct  responsibility 
to  the  churches  through  the  Council,  has  arranged  a  realignment  of  tasks 
that  gives  each  society  a  well  defined  responsibility,  draws  them  into 
natural  affiliations  and  promotes  efficiency  and  economy  of  management, 
and  has  endorsed  an  Apportionment  Plan,  developed  out  of  twenty  years 
of  experimenting,  which  distributes  as  evenly  as  possible  the  cost  of  mis¬ 
sions  among  all  the  churches.  Experience  will  doubtless  indicate  other 
wholesome  adjustments,  but  the  Congregational  churches  of  North  America 
will  now  be  able  to  work  them  out  without  friction  or  unnecessary  delay. 
Thus  has  been  reached  by  a  genuinely  Congregational  procedure,  covering 
half  a  century  or  so,  a  missionary  administration  promising  a  rich  fruitage 
in  the  future. 

Characteristic  of  the  decade  has  been  a  rapid  change  in  stress  from  the 
individual  to  his  environment.  Our  mission  enterprise  is  thinking  socially 
of  the  new  community  and  of  the  new  nation  as  well  as  of  the  new  indi¬ 
vidual.  This  has  accompanied  and  been  encouraged  by  the  steady  growth 
in  democratic  sentiment  around  the  world  because  of  the  recent  war. 
Equally  characteristic  has  been  the  rapid  growth  of  the  demand  for  schools 
of  vocational  training,  industrial  and  social  alike,  not  merely  among  unde¬ 
veloped  peoples  but  everywhere. 

The  Great  War  of  1914-18  affected  seriously  missionary  work  in  all  the 
world.  It  forced  large  unproductive  expenditures  upon  the  American 
Board  and  upon  our  home  societies.  It  caused  many  readjustments  of 


34 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


work.  On  the  whole,  however,  it  has  opened  the  way  to  an  energetic 
extension  work  in  the  third  decade  of  this  century. 

The  American  Board  began  the  decade  by  passing  the  million  dollar 
mark  in  annual  receipts  and  by  commissioning  seventy-three  missionaries, 
the  greatest  number  in  any  one  year.  Its  centenary  was  impressively 
celebrated  at  Boston,  Andover  and  Bradford,  a  stirring  expression  of  the 
affectionate  devotion  of  the  Pilgrim  churches  to  their  world-wide  task. 
In  1911  the  wife  and  son  of  the  late  D.  Willis  James,  a  life-long  friend  of 
missions,  gave  $1,000,000  as  a  permanent  fund  to  be  expended  in  the 
promotion  of  higher  education  on  our  mission  fields.  In  1913  the  Board 
sent  a  deputation,  headed  by  its  president,  Dr.  Capen,  to  attend  the  cen¬ 
tenary  of  the  Marathi  mission,  the  first  to  b,e  organized  under  its  auspices. 
From  that  journey  he  did  not  return,  but  his  thirteen  years  of  zealous 
service  during  the  decade  of  transition  will  ever  be  memorable  among 
forward-looking  Congregationalists.  The  war  with  its  readjustments  of 
influence  let  loose  a  fiendish  attack  upon  unhappy  Armenia,  which  pros¬ 
trated  but  could  not  destroy  our  missionary  service.  On  the  contrary  so 
generally  have  the  missionaries  been  used  in  relief  operations  that  a  new 
field  of  influence  and  service  has  opened  to  them  among  those  hitherto 
inaccessible.  During  the  same  period  a  deputation  went  to  India,  and 
another  visited  Japan.  Grinnell  College  with  the  consent  of  the  Board 
set  on  foot  the  Grinnell-in-China  educational  program,  which  gives  to 
the  students  and  alumni  of  that  college  a  definite  task  of  educational  de¬ 
velopment  in  North  Shantung.  Other  colleges  have  since  followed  the 
lead  of  Oberlin,  Yale  and  Grinnell,  but  not  as  yet  with  a  similar  breadth 
of  plan.  In  1918  the  first  missionary  to  Africa  representing  our  colored 
Congregational  churches  was  commissioned  for  service  in  the  West  Central 
Africa  mission.  The  “Forward  Movement”  among  the  Canadian  Con¬ 
gregational  churches,  just  completed,  has  raised  $75,000  for  the  equipment 
of  Currie  Institute  at  Dondi.  The  Canadian  staff  has  been  doubled  in  two 
years  and  plans  to  take  charge  of  three  stations. 

In  home  missions  the  decade  has  been  one  of  great  progress.  The 
“  heroic  Christian  surgery  ”  of  the  Commission  on  Missions  of  the  National 
Council  resulted  in  much  readjustment  of  home  responsibilities,  but  also 
in  a  condition  of  excellent  healthfulness.  In  1911-13  a  survey  of  the  neg¬ 
lected  fields  in  the  United  States  was  carried  through  by  a  group  of  de¬ 
nominations,  materially  forwarding  denominational  comity  on  the  active 
frontiers.  During  those  same  years  a  number  of  State  Associations  be¬ 
came  incorporated  Conferences,  assuming  steadily  larger  responsibilities 
for  meeting  their  own  missionary  needs. 

The  American  Missionary  Association  in  1916  transferred  its  white 
church  work  in  the  South  to  other  organizations  and  took  over  the  mission 
work  of  the  Education  Society  for  Spanish-speaking  people  in  the  South¬ 
west  and  Florida.  In  that  same  year  the  veteran  missionary,  Rev.  Alfred 
L.  Riggs,  passed  away  after  thirty-four  years  of  powerful  service  among  the 
Sioux  Indians.  In  1917  Dr.  Ryder,  whose  great  heart  beat  for  all  de¬ 
pendent  races,  ended  his  thirty-two  years  of  continuous  service  to  the 
Association. 

The  Sunday  School  Society  began  the  decade  by  adopting  the  Pilgrim 
Standards.  These  as  revised  in  1917  have  worked  wonders  in  raising  the 
efficiency  of  our  Sunday  Schools  everywhere.  In  1916  the  religious  educa¬ 
tion  work  of  the  Sunday  School  Society  was  given  to  the  Education  So¬ 
ciety;  the  field  work  was  transferred  to  the  newly  organized  Sunday-school 
Extension  Society,  which  is  one  of  the  Church  Extension  Boards.  Two 
new  departments  were  added  by  the  Education  Society,  a  department  of 
Student  Religious  Life  and  one  of  Social  Service,  the  latter  taken  over 
from  the  National  Council.  In  1918  an  annual  Every  Member  Canvass 
of  the  Churches  was  instituted  in  the  effort  to  rise  to  the  heights  of  the 
Tercentenary  appeal. 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


35 


In  1917  the  Board  of  Ministerial  Relief  reported  to  the  National  Council 
a  well-conceived  plan  for  an  annuity  system  which  would  greatly  increase 
the  benefits  of  the  Fund.  This  report  was  enthusiastically  adopted  by 
the  Council.  The  Pilgrim  Memorial  Fund  is  the  generous  contribution 
of  the  denomination  to  assure  the  efficient  and  lasting  execution  of  this 
project. 

The  decade  has  closed  with  a  munificent  gift,  the  full  value  of  which  is 
as  yet  unknown,  the  Charles  M.  Hall  bequest  to  Oberlin,  to  the  American 
Missionary  Association,  to  Berea  and  to  educational  missions  in  the  Orient, 
which  will  greatly  contribute  to  missionary  extension.  Simultaneously 
has  developed  our  own  Tercentenary  Movement  with  its  fivefold  pro¬ 
gram  and  the  pan-denominational  Interchurch  World  Movement  with 
its  comprehensive  survey  of  world  conditions  and  its  astonishing  develop¬ 
ment  of  missionary  giving.  In  1920  there  appeared  also  the  conclusions 
regarding  the  Missionary  Outlook  in  the  Light  of  the  War  prepared  by 
the  Federal  Council’s  Committee  on  the  War  and  the  Religious  Outlook, 
a  symposium  of  the  highest  practical  value.  In  April  at  Honolulu  was 
celebrated  by  suitable  pageantry  and  addresses  the  centennial  of  the 
Hawaiian  Mission  of  the  American  Board. 

The  concluding  year  of  the  second  decade  of  this  century  thus  finds  the 
Congregational  churches  of  North  America  singularly  well  organized  for 
the  task  before  them.  Their  800,000  members  are  directly  related  to  their 
missionary  responsibilities.  They  may  review  a  hundred  years  and  more 
of  rich,  instructive,  stirring  experience;  they  are  now  a  working  unity; 
they  control  the  policies  of  the  seven  societies  which  are  the  channels  of 
their  generosity  and  faith;  these  societies  have  as  many  distinctive  fields 
of  effort  covering  all  objectives  without  overlapping;  there  is  a  compre¬ 
hension  of  our  denominational  task  and  an  intelligence  regarding  its  de¬ 
tails  quite  unknown  in  earlier  years  except  among  the  leaders.  Our 
people  stand  in  well-ordered  relations  of  cooperation  with  the  vast  majority 
of  the  organizations  of  other  communions;  they  look  forward  with  the 
brethren  of  other  names  to  a  great  advance  movement  in  the  years  just 
ahead;  the  burden  of  responsibility  has  been  laid  squarely  upon  them  as  a 
great  fellowship  in  service.  The  great  question  of  today  is,  “  What  next?  ” 

XVIII 

The  By-products  of  this  Missionary  History 

The  impetus  of  a  great  missionary  devotedness  extending  over  genera¬ 
tions  has  given  rise  to  many  incidental  achievements  which  are  worthy  of 
mention. 

Foremost  among  these  is  a  growing  missionary  tradition.  The  descen¬ 
dants  of  the  heroic  pioneers  of  an  earlier  day  are  among  the  readiest 
volunteers  of  today.  The  names  of  Bridgman,  Wilder,  Peet,  Riggs,  Bal- 
lantine,  Bissell,  Hume,  Fairbank,  Gates,  Chandler,  Herrick,  Hastings, 
Howland,  Sanders,  Hartwell,  Porter,  Cary  and  DeForest  among  our 
foreign  staff,  and  of  an  impressive  number  of  the  leaders  of  our  church  life 
at  home  who  are  children  or  grandchildren  of  the  pioneers  in  our  home 
development,  testify  to  the  persistence  from  generation  to  generation  of  the 
missionary  purpose,  creating  a  sacred  treasury  on  which  without  fear  of 
depletion  our  churches  may  perpetually  draw. 

Of  equal  value  is  a  gradually  attained  organization  of  the  Congregational 
churches  as  a  missionary  constituency.  Our  churches  henceforth  will  share 
collectively  in  the  task  of  Christianizing  America  and  the  world.  Without 
repressing  individual  initiative  or  opportunity  they  have  adopted  a  mis¬ 
sionary  program  representatively  directed.  To  this  result,  recently  at¬ 
tained,  decades  of  organization  for  giving,  for  education  and  for  service 
have  contributed.  In  this  process  of  organization  by  states,  districts, 


36  MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


communities  and  churches  Congregational  women  have  tirelessly  and  re¬ 
sourcefully  cooperated. 

Meanwhile  on  the  foreign  mission  field  an  educational  program  has  de¬ 
veloped  which  fairly  rivals  in  scope  and  significance  the  educational  service 
at  home  which  Congregationalists  regard  as  indispensable  and  for  which 
they  make  generous  provision.  A  chain  of  institutions  for  all  types  of 
education  stretches  from  the  Levant  through  British  India  and  the  Far 
East  to  the  Philippines  and  South  Africa,  sharing  with  the  union  universi¬ 
ties  and  theological  schools  of  China  and  India  and  Mexico  in  the  inspiring 
tasks  of  creating  an  intelligent  Christian  constituency  and  of  providing  it 
with  a  trained,  indigenous  leadership  for  the  future. 

Through  its  great  missionary  societies  Congregationalism  has  been 
influential  in  guiding  the  formulation  of  mission  policies  at  home  and  abroad. 
In  foreign  mission  interests  this  influence  was  due  in  part  to  a  priority  of 
organization  with  its  accompanying  prestige  and  leadership  during  the 
first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century;  but  even  more  has  it  been  due  to  the 
splendid  capacity  of  the  administrative  group  brought  together  by  the 
meetings  of  the  Prudential  Committee.  The  American  Board  was  a  pioneer 
in  field  organization;  it  commissioned  the  first  missionary  whose  task  was 
to  be  distinctively  medical;  it  was  the  first  society  to  occupy  North  China; 
it  was  one  of  the  earliest  to  promote  the  idea  of  an  independent,  self- 
propagating  native  church  in  each  mission  area.  In  a  parallel  way  Con¬ 
gregationalism  can  claim  to  have  contributed  through  its  home  societies 
to  the  growth  of  a  sane,  brotherly,  nation-wide  policy  in  meeting  the  needs 
of  the  United  States.  In  the  half  century  since  the  Civil  War  our  home 
administrators  and  their  advisory  committees  by  their  fairness  and  friendli¬ 
ness  have  led  the  way  to  that  definite  cooperation  between  different  com¬ 
munions  in  dealing  with  matters  of  national  and  local  need  which  is  becom¬ 
ing  an  accepted  policy. 

The  execution  of  a  wide-ranging  missionary  program  has  developed 
many  outstanding  personalities ,  who  have  led  the  way  in  many  types  of 
achievement.  We  have  contributed  our  full  share  of  explorers  with 
pioneering  capacity,  of  great  evangelists,  of  administrators,  of  language 
makers,  of  translators,  of  missionary  educators  and  physicians,  of  states¬ 
men  who  were  truly  makers  of  a  people,  of  historians,  scholars  and  investi¬ 
gators  of  every  type.  Such  men  are  still  at  the  forefront  of  our  great  enter¬ 
prises.  Through  them  we  have  been  able  to  solve  the  perplexities  of  the 
last  two  decades  with  the  efficiency  and  certainty  of  our  historic  past. 

To  these  impressive  by-products  of  Congregational  advance  may  be 
added  the  promotion  of  cooperative  Christian  enterprises.  Congregationalists 
were  foremost  in  the  work  of  the  Christian  Commission  of  the  Civil  War, 
and  have  always  reacted  promptly  to  legitimate  appeals  for  aid  from  with¬ 
out  in  times  of  famine  or  destitution  by  organizing  a  nation-wide  response. 
The  denomination  has  always  generously  supported  enterprises  naturally 
cooperative  in  character,  such  as  the  Bible,  Tract,  Temperance,  or  Sea¬ 
man’s  Friend  Societies  and  the  Young  Men’s  and  Young  Women’s  Chris¬ 
tian  Associations.  In  truth  the  Year-Book  for  1918  reports  that  the  gifts 
of  our  churches  during  the  previous  year  to  undenominational  interests 
were  only  a  little  less  than  the  grand  total  of  gifts  to  our  eight  standard 
denominational  societies.  Whether  wise  or  not,  this  generosity  is  an 
index  of  the  favor  with  which  Congregationalists  look  upon  friendly  schemes 
of  federation  and  of  the  readiness  with  which  they  share  in  the  support  and 
management  of  movements  looking  toward  the  minimizing  of  denomina¬ 
tional  advantage  and  the  extension  of  cooperative  enterprises.  The 
combined  attack  of  the  whole  American  Church,  Protestant  and  Catholic 
alike,  upon  the  problems  raised  by  the  late  war  was  exactly  in  line  with 
Congregational  desire.  Its  members  did  their  full  share,  and  more,  in  sup¬ 
porting  the  War  Work  Council  and  the  Red  Cross,  and  in  carrying  to  the 
front  our  flag,  where  not  a  few  of  them  won  the  croix  de  guerre. 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


37 


XIX 


The  Allotted  Responsibilities  of  Congregationalism 

Notwithstanding  the  readiness  of  Congregational  forces  to  enter  into 
cooperative  enterprises  there  are  well  defined  responsibilities  in  the  line  of 
Christian  aggression  which  must  be  assumed  by  distinct  denominations 
as  convenient  units  of  energy,  zeal  and  reserve  power.  The  Congrega- 
tionalists  of  North  America  and  the  churches  affiliated  with  them  have 
been  allotted  certain  tasks,  the  development  of  which  rests  upon  them. 

In  general  the  American  Congregational  churches  have  accepted  re¬ 
sponsibility  for  the  evangelization  of  about  one-tenth  of  the  unevangelized 
world.  The  greater  part  of  the  vast  island  of  Mindanao  in  the  Philip¬ 
pines,  second  in  size  in  the  archipelago,  a  territory  in  Mexico  as  large  as 
the  northeastern  United  States  from  Maine  to  Virginia,  Albania  in  the 
Balkans,  the  Turkish  and  Armenian  speaking  portions  of  Asiatic  Turkey 
and  choice  sections  of  China,  India,  Africa,  Alaska  and  Porto  Rico  are 
dependent  for  their  Christian  development  upon  the  loyalty  and  devoted¬ 
ness  of  our  churches.  In  these  countries  our  Congregational  representa¬ 
tives  have  undertaken  and  must  carry  to  completion  important  tasks  of 
educational,  social  and  religious  development.  Each  country  is  in  need  of 
the  program  of  Christian  service  which  has  wrought  such  miracles  in  past 
decades  on  every  mission  area. 

There  is  a  parallel  duty  of  real  importance.  In  the  new  Czecho-Slovakia, 
in  Japan,  India,  China  and  the  Hawaiian  Islands  indigenous  Protestant 
churches  are  organized  to  assume  various  degrees  of  a  real  and  growing 
responsibility  for  their  own  life  and  growth.  Our  part  for  years  to  come 
will  be  the  hearty  giving  of  aid  and  counsel  to  such  church  groups  in  their 
worthy  tasks,  seeking  their  strength,  not  our  own.  By  such  helpfulness 
we  shall  continue  the  generous  sympathies  of  our  fathers  without  repeating 
their  errors. 

XX 

The  Missionary  Policy  of  Congregationalism 

This  survey  of  the  three  hundred  years  of  Congregational  growth  has 
developed  a  sane,  forward-looking,  efficient  policy  which  may  be  stated  as 
follows: 

Congregationalism  does  not  recognize  itself  as  provincial  under  any  cir¬ 
cumstances.  While  it  has  always  been  generous  to  the  verge  of  prodigality 
to  undenominational  enterprises,  Congregationalism  has  gradually  dis¬ 
covered  its  own  values.  No  keen  and  honest  observer  of  today  will  de¬ 
clare  that  its  usefulness  is  limited  to  certain  areas  or  colors  or  social  classes. 
It  has  a  message  everywhere  for  those  of  any  social  scale  who  like  inde¬ 
pendence  and  will  assume  responsibility. 

It  holds  to  a  broad  comprehensive,  progressive  and  social  gospel  at  home 
and  abroad.  There  is  abundant  room  in  Congregationalism  for  freedom  of 
thought  and  of  speech;  it  favors  the  historical  viewpoint  which  recognizes 
the  element  of  good  in  history;  it  has  repeatedly  refused  to  be  bound  by 
the  theological  formulas  of  the  past,  although  believing  in  their  essential 
truth.  It  does  not  impose  either  upon  its  missionaries  or  upon  the  churches 
which  they  organize  a  rigid  creed  or  form  of  service.  It  seeks  to  develop 
the  social  implications  of  the  gospel,  and  through  many  of  its  trusted  lead¬ 
ers  is  aiding  to  establish  the  applications  of  the  principles  of  Jesus  to  social 
situations.  Congregationalists  have  been  ready  in  their  support  of  social 
movements  which,  though  not  avowedly  Christian,  were  Christlike  in 
spirit  and  action. 

It  believes  in  high  standards  of  service  and  in  trained  leadership.  The 
Pilgrim  leaders  were  not  prompter  in  founding  Harvard  College  than  were 


38  MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


our  Congregational  leaders  in  the  “  newest  West  ”  in  taking  steps  for 
institutions  of  higher  learning,  or  Joseph  Neesima  in  pleading  for  the 
Doshisha,  or  General  Armstrong  in  setting  up  a  Hampton.  The  whole 
splendid  series  of  colleges  and  academies  which  have  thrown  a  luster  on 
Congregational  ideals  were  founded  for  the  sake  of  producing  an  adequate, 
cultured  Christian  leadership.  A  great  task  still  awaits  our  churches 
of  making  good  this  history  by  developing  it  to  the  end.  That  end  will 
not  have  been  reached  until  every  strategic  institution  in  which  we  have 
a  historic  interest  in  equipped  for  first-rate  service. 

It  accepts  cooperative  responsibility  with  evangelical  believers  of  all  shades 
of  opinion.  Congregationalists  believe  in  the  Church  Universal.  They 
are  ready  to  go  as  far  toward  organic  church  unity  as  is  consistent  with 
local  autonomy  and  free  individualism.  They  believe  in  doing  much  of 
the  missionary  work  of  the  world  cooperatively,  notably  the  work  of  higher 
education,  of  medical  service  and  of  social  uplift  in  areas  occupied  by  more 
than  one  Christian  communion. 

It  believes  in  the  promotion  to  the  utmost  of  the  independence  and  self- 
direction  of  the  churches  which  it  has  helped  into  life.  From  the  days  of 
Dr.  Anderson  Congregationalists  have  been  prominent  in  the  development 
of  this  policy.  To  that  end  the  denomination  has  spent  great  sums  for 
the  training  of  national  leaders  in  missionary  areas  and  then  has  let  them 
lead.  Not  only  in  Japan  and  in  the  Turkish  Empire,  but  more  recently 
in  China,  India  and  South  Africa  this  policy  has  borne  fruit. 

It  has  granted  also  a  reasonable  autonomy  to  each  mission  group  on  the 
foreign  field.  Very  early  in  the  history  of  the  American  Board,  it  consti¬ 
tuted  its  missions  as  communities.  As  soon  as  there  were  three  male 
members  in  a  mission,  it  was  expected  to  organize  with  stated  meetings 
and  exact  records.  The  mission  thus  organized  has  gradually  been  ac¬ 
corded  ample  self-directing  powers,  subject,  of  course,  to  the  revision  and 
counsel  of  the  Prudential  Committee. 

It  has  encouraged  individual  initiative  and  responsibility.  On  the  whole 
Congregationalism  has  trusted  its  own  agents  and  products.  It  has 
picked  its  representatives  with  care  and  then  given  them  relative  freedom; 
it  has  founded  its  institutions  and  rejoiced  over  their  attainment  of  inde¬ 
pendence;  it  has  exercised  no  such  superintendence  over  its  own  agents 
as  to  develop  an  ecclesiastical  machine.  Such  a  policy  leads  to  loss  as 
well  as  profit;  but  on  the  whole  we  may  regard  it  as  justified  by  its  outcome. 

It  believes  in  a  true  Christian  unity.  Congregationalists  fellowship  with 
all  sincere  Protestant  Christians  and  stand  ready  to  enter  into  the  closest 
practicable  relations  with  them,  refraining  from  pushing  into  fields  already 
sufficiently  churched  and  welcoming  the  reduction  of  churches  in  many 
communities  through  a  mutual  exchange  of  fields.  Organic  unity  it  may 
debate;  cooperative  unity  it  supports  unhesitatingly. 

XXI 

The  Future  Missionary  Program  of  North  American 

Congregationalism 

It  is  idle  for  any  organism  to  project  itself  for  a  generation,  but  a  fore¬ 
cast  for  the  third  decade  of  this  century  may  be  less  daring  and  more 
excusable. 

The  missionary  program  of  the  next  ten  years  should  be  a  united  Society 
program  in  the  sense  that  every  one  of  our  recognized  organizations 
will  be  one  member  of  a  well-organized  team,  each  having  its  definite 
responsibility  and  doing  its  share  of  the  work.  Our  National  Council 
through  its  Commission  on  Missions  may  be  held  responsible  for  the  adop- 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


39 


tion  of  a  well  considered  policy  for  each  and  all,  and  through  its  voting 
control  it  has  now  become  able  to  insure  a  related  program  without  con¬ 
flict,  jealousies  or  lost  motion. 

It  will  be  more  and  more  a  whole  church  program.  During  the  last  half 
century  the  women  of  the  churches  and  the  young  people  have  been  gradu¬ 
ally  finding  their  place  in  the  missionary  program  and  contributing  def¬ 
initely  and  wisely  to  its  efficiency.  It  may  be  time  to  raise  the  question 
whether  the  splendid  enthusiasm  and  ripened  judgment  of  the  women  and 
the  broadening  range  of  the  tasks  allotted  to  juniors  may  be  more  effec¬ 
tively  utilized  in  the  execution  of  a  program  for  the  whole  church,  without 
sacrificing  the  initiative,  efficiency  or  responsibility  of  natural  groupings  of 
workers. 

It  will  be  a  program  addressed  to  an  educated  and  wisely  organized  church. 
Congregationalism  should  promote  the  education  of  its  whole  constituency 
on  missionary  matters.  The  Student  Volunteer  Movement  was  the 
pioneer,  about  1894,  in  developing  a  literature  of  missionary  education  in 
this  country,  but  its  output  was  for  students  and  had  little  effect  upon  the 
churches.  Two  Congregationalists  in  1900,  Miss  Abbie  Child  and  Dr. 
Harlan  P.  Beach,  began  to  formulate  a  workable  plan  for  increasing  the 
intelligence  of  the  churches  regarding  missions.  This  scheme  since  1902 
has  occasioned  volume  after  volume  of  missionary  literature,  studied  by 
rapidly  increasing  numbers. 

The  progress  of  educational  science  has  gradually  led  the  churches  of 
America  to  adopt  a  classification  for  all  purposes  of  instruction  that  recog¬ 
nizes  natural  intellectual  grades  and  groupings,  each  lending  itself  to  a 
suitable  type  of  instruction,  anticipating  certain  definite  impressions  and 
resulting  in  specific  tasks.  Our  churches  are  fortunate  in  the  scientific 
leadership  along  these  lines  for  which  the  Education  Society  is  equipped. 

It  will  call  for  a  vigorous  policy  of  recruiting  for  Christian  service.  No 
graver  problem  faces  Congregationalism  than  the  maintenance  of  the  Pil¬ 
grim  tradition  which  consecrated  the  choicest  son  of  a  family  to  Christian 
leadership.  Its  solution  will  not  be  reached  merely  by  furnishing  our 
Christian  colleges  with  adequate  endowments.  It  involves  the  standardiz¬ 
ing  of  the  departments  of  Biblical  Literature  and  of  Religious  Education 
in  our  colleges  and  their  first-rate  equipment  and  the  encouragement  at 
each  institution  of  some  provision  for  the  sane  interpretation  of  religion. 
A  true  solution,  however,  goes  back  into  the  secondary  schools  and,  even 
farther,  to  our  Christian  pulpits  and  homes.  More  aggressive  leadership 
and  organized  attention  must  be  given  to  the  enlistment  of  the  finest  young 
men  and  women  of  our  churches  and  schools  for  lives  of  service.  This 
administrative  advance  should  be  supported  by  the  organization  by  our 
Boards  of  candidate  departments  to  give  continuous,  individual  attention 
to  the  task  of  recruiting  and  training  candidates  for  appointment.  Our 
choice  young  people  are  not  unready  to  respond  to  a  summons  to  service. 
They  must,  however,  be  hand-picked. 

It  will  involve  the  intelligent  promotion  of  a  wise  scheme  of  missionary 
preparation  and  training  for  these  recruits.  Good  missionaries  require 
arduous  and  extended  preparation.  Congregationalism  has  been  foremost 
in  furnishing  the  institutions  required  for  their  adequate  preparation  at 
home  and  in  supporting  those  required  for  their  further  training  on  mission 
areas.  Their  wise  promotion  will  be  a  prominent  feature  of  the  missionary 
statesmanship  of  the  immediate  future. 

It  will  be  sympathetic  with  the  progress  on  the  field  of  plans  for  mission 
devolution.  During  the  next  ten  years  there  must  be  a  very  marked  ad¬ 
vance  in  the  transfer  of  authority  from  our  missions  to  the  churches  in 
certain  mission  areas  with  an  accompanying  assumption  on  their  part  of 
self-support  and  of  responsibility  for  the  evangelizing  of  their  respective 


40 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


areas.  American  Congregationalists  have  looked  with  approval  upon  the 
formation  of  “  United  Churches  ”  in  India,  China  and  elsewhere. 

It  will  develop  and  then  trust  a  broadly  conceived ,  indigenous  leadership  for 
these  areas.  In  several  areas  Christians  of  the  third  generation  are  becom¬ 
ing  available  for  responsible  tasks  with  a  heritage  of  Christian  culture 
which  should  qualify  them  for  real  leadership.  Such  promising  youth 
must  be  enabled  by  scholarship,  fellowship  or  loans  to  secure  a  first-rate 
training.  Generally  they  belong  to  families  whose  revenues  are  meager, 
the  pastors  and  teachers  of  the  mission  area.  The  completion  of  the 
$2,000,000  fund  for  higher  education  on  the  mission  field,  already  more 
than  half  paid  in,  will  enable  the  Board  to  go  forward  with  this  important 
task.  The  leaders  needed  will  not  be  pastors  only,  but  competent  literary, 
professional  and  social  workers  of  every  type. 

It  will  contribute  heartily  toward  the  current  movements  in  the  direction  of 
a  greater  unification  of  missionary  activity.  There  is  no  longer  any  disposi¬ 
tion  to  question  the  wisdom  of  union  institutions  on  the  foreign  field  for 
higher  education,  for  medical  service  and  for  various  forms  of  social  service 
much  approved.  How  far  the  administrative  functions  of  securing  and 
training  recruits,  of  securing  funds  and  of  educating  the  churches  may  be 
advantageously  performed  in  a  similar  manner  is  a  matter  of  discussion  and 
experiment  today.  Congregationalists  have  “  played  the  game  ”  in 
comity  matters  throughout  their  history.  Apparently  the  world  is  just 
on  the  threshold  of  a  great  interdenominational  advance. 

It  will  include  a  more  adequate  effort  to  reach  the  representative  classes  of 
each  occupied  area.  Our  missions  have  won  their  place,  their  prestige  and 
their  influence  quite  generally,  as  in  India,  by  what  they  have  done  for 
depressed  and  lower  classes.  Christianity  has  a  message,  however,  for  the 
strong,  the  self-reliant  and  the  influential,  no  less  than  for  the  weak.  The 
approach  to  the  cultured  classes  and  their  Christianization  must  be  a  real 
feature  of  the  next  decade  without  at  all  diminishing  our  sympathy  or  our 
program  of  helpfulness  for  those  who  need  an  uplift. 

It  will  face  bravely ,  frankly  and  in  friendly  fashion  the  social  conditions  of 
the  day  at  home  and  on  the  foreign  field.  Our  home  churches  face  this  task 
and  are  organizing  under  the  leadership  of  the  Education  Society  and  the 
National  Council’s  Commission  on  Social  Service  and  in  cooperation  with 
the  Federal  Council  and  the  Interchurch  Movement  to  meet  it  adequately. 
The  whole  problem  is  one  of  the  Christianization  of  society.  Hence  the 
need  of  emphasizing  the  broadest  training  for  Christian  leadership. 

Even  more  essential  is  it  that  our  Christian  program  in  foreign  fields 
should  include  a  constant  contact  with  the  social  interests  of  the  day. 
There  is  danger  that  a  mission  church,  like  many  at  home,  will  settle  down 
to  the  mere  cultivation  of  its  own  life,  the  maintenance  of  its  services  and 
the  pressing  of  its  religious  program  without  aiming  to  impress  very  def¬ 
initely  the  teeming  life  which  surrounds  it.  Since  the  non-Christian  faiths 
make  so  little  contribution  through  their  temples  and  services  to  the  social 
welfare  of  their  communities,  it  is  all  the  more  incumbent  upon  Christian¬ 
ity  to  show  how  it  deals  with  every  phase  of  human  need.  No  reform 
movement  in  India  or  elsewhere  should  make  a  deeper  appeal  to  the  sacrifi¬ 
cial  spirit  of  the  race  than  does  aggressive  Christianity. 

It  will  share  with  sister  denominations  in  furnishing  a  real  ministry  for 
the  newly  formed  communities  of  the  nation,  for  the  growing  cities  with 
their  manifold  problems  and  for  those  who  have  come  from  foreign  shores 
to  the  United  States  and  are  yet  unassimilated,  also  for  the  weak  yet 
strategically  important  churches  of  the  rural  communities.  This  is  an 
urgent  national  task.  Connecticut  and  Massachusetts,  the  generous 
foster-parents  of  every  missionary  advance  since  1793,  contributors  of 
millions  to  home  missionary  work  alone,  require  today  one-third  of  the 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


41 


workers  of  the  Home  Missionary  Society  for  the  maintenance  of  their  Pil¬ 
grim  integrity.  Congregationalists  have  happily  promoted  relations  of 
federation  and  comity  with  other  communions  and  will  do  all  in  their  power 
to  further  such  relationships  in  the  years  to  come. 

It  will  set  its  face  against  race  antagonisms  and  unbrotherliness,  helping 
all  depressed  races  to  self-reliance,  patriotism,  literacy  and  serviceableness, 
training  the  needed  leaders.  This  great  task  will,  as  in  the  past,  be  pushed 
chiefly  through  the  American  Missionary  Association. 

It  will  provide  generously ,  as  a  part  of  its  missionary  program,  not  only  for 
the  current  efficiency  but  for  the  old  age  of  those  whose  lives  are  spent  in  mis¬ 
sionary  service.  The  Pilgrim  Memorial  Fund  and  the  other  funds  will  not 
be  considered  as  a  means  of  granting  a  dole  to  destitute  ministers,  but  of 
making  a  deserved  recognition  of  faithful  and  heroic  service.  Nor  is  that 
service,  at  home  or  abroad,  to  be  one  of  heart-breaking  penury.  Congrega¬ 
tionalism  proposes  to  enable  its  representatives  to  do  their  work  with  zeal, 
efficiency  and  repute. 

It  will,  with  the  zeal  and  persistence  of  early  years,  promote  nation-wide 
efforts  for  evangelization,  for  social  rehabilitation  and  denominational  effi¬ 
ciency.  These  years  have  shown  that  freedom  of  thinking,  speech  and 
action  are  wholly  consistent  with  corporate  unity,  so  long  as  that  remains 
representative.  In  our  mission  work,  as  in  political  affairs,  we  face  the 
future  on  a  federated,  organized  basis.  Vitalized  by  the  religious  motive 
and  by  a  spirit  of  real  fraternalism,  Congregationalism  will  be  able  to  do 
its  full  share  for  the  world.  It  will  seek  to  support  all  types  of  missionary 
work  with  a  liberality  that  expresses  the  conviction  that  the  church  which  is 
interested  only  in  its  local  needs  is  dead  already. 

XXII 

In  Conclusion 

Facing  the  new  decade  of  opportunity  with  all  this  unity  and  variety 
of  organized  life,  what  Congregationalism  most  needs  is  a  fresh  spiritual 
empowering  on  Boards,  churches,  pastors,  teachers,  laity  and  missionaries 
alike.  It  was  that  power  which  quickened  the  first  great  mission  enterprise, 
when  a  hundred  men  “  who  had  trod  the  banks  of  the  Cam  with  John 
Milton  and  Jeremy  Taylor  ”  came  across  the  sea  to  make  a  Christian 
country  with  Christian  institutions.  Only  the  lessening  of  that  zeal  can 
account  for  the  indifference  and  the  occasional  hostility  among  our  church 
members  to  the  missionary  enterprise.  Congregationalism  more  than 
most  of  our  sister  communions  requires  an  incessant  propelling  force. 
We  must  rely  upon  a  constant  renewal  of  the  factors  which  during  these 
three  centuries  have  shown  us  the  way  ahead. 

The  real  secret  of  Congregational  efficiency  has  been  its  leadership. 
Other  denominations  may  go  far  by  thorough  organization  and  able  supervi¬ 
sion.  These  factors  will  never  assure  the  best  that  is  in  Congregationalism. 
They  have  great  value,  but  we  are  not  dependent  upon  them.  Leaders, 
who  embody  our  ideals,  are  indispensable.  With  them  in  sight  we  can 
mold  our  history  as  it  comes,  preserving  both  our  cherished  liberty  and  our 
efficiency. 

The  story  of  the  Pilgrims  and  their  successors  is  a  trumpet-call  to  further 
service  as  high  and  heroic  in  its  character  as  any  already  recorded.  The 
heart  beats  faster  and  the  blood  runs  warmer  as  we  think  through  the 
thrilling  record  of  these  three  centuries.  The  vision  of  the  fathers  abides 
to  challenge  their  children  of  to-day. 


42 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


APPENDIX 

The  Commission  desires  to  remind  our  churches  of  a  few  of  the  books 
relating  to  the  theme  of  this  report  with  which  all  Congregationalists  should 
be  acquainted. 


I 

Congregational  Missionary  Biography 

1  Barrows,  J.  O.  In  the  Land  of  Ararat;  a  Sketch  of  the  Life  of  Mrs. 

Elizabeth  F.  B.  Ussher.  New  York,  Revell,  1917. 

2  Bingham,  Hiram.  Twenty-one  Years  in  the  Sandwich  Islands.  3d 

edition,  New  York,  S.  Converse,  1849. 

3  Chandler,  J.  S.  Seventy-five  Years  in  the  Madura  Mission.  Madras, 

Mumford,  1912. 

4  Davis,  J.  Merle.  Davis ,  Soldier  Missionary.  Boston,  Pilgrim 

Press,  1916. 

5  .  De  Forest,  Charlotte  B.  The  Evolution  of  a  Missionary.  (A  bi¬ 

ography  of  Dr.  J.  H.  De  Forest.)  New  York,  Revell,  1914. 

6  Greene,  Joseph  K.  Leavening  the  Levant.  Boston,  Pilgrim  Press, 

1916. 

7  Gulick,  Elizabeth  P.  Alice  Gordon  Gulick;  Her  Life  and  Work  in 

Spain.  New  York,  Revell,  1917. 

8  Gulick,  O.  H.  The  Pilgrims  of  Hawaii.  New  York,  Revell,  1918. 

9  Hamlin,  Cyrus.  My  Life  and  Times.  Boston,  Pilgrim  Press,  1893. 

10  Hubbard,  Ethel.  Eliza  Agnew,  the  Mother  of  a  Thousand  Daughters. 

(Jubilee  Series.)  Boston,  Woman’s  Board,  1917. 

11  Miner,  Luella.  China's  Book  of  Martyrs.  Phila.,  Westminster 

Press,  1903. 

12  Prime,  E.  D.  G.  Forty  Years  in  the  Turkish  Empire:  Memoirs  of 

Rev.  William  Goodell.  8th  edition,  Boston,  American  Board,  1891. 

13  Riggs,  Stephen  R.  Mary  and  I:  Forty  Years  with  the  Sioux.  Boston, 

Pilgrim  Press,  2d  edition,  1887. 

14  Seabury,  Joseph  B.  The  Vision  of  a  Short  Life.  (A  memorial  of 

Warren  Seabury.)  Cambridge,  1909. 

15  Speer,  Robert  E.  Memorial  of  Horace  Tracy  Pitkin.  New  York, 

Revell,  1903. 

16  Talbot,  Edith  Armstrong.  Samuel  Chapman  Armstrong.  New 

York,  Doubleday  Page  &  Co.,  1904. 

17  Ussher,  C.  D.,  and  Knapp,  Grace  H.  An  American  Physician  in 

Turkey.  Boston,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  1917. 

18  White,  George  E.  Charles  Chapin  Tracy:  Missionary,  Philanthro¬ 

pist,  Educator.  Boston,  Pilgrim  Press,  1918. 

19  Williams,  F.  W.  Life  and  Letters  of  Samuel  Wells  Williams,  Mis¬ 

sionary,  Diplomatist,  Sinologue.  New  York,  Putnam,  1889. 

20  Wright,  H.  B.  A  Life  with  a  Purpose;  a  Memorial  of  John  L.  Thurs¬ 

ton.  New  York,  Revell,  1908. 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 


43 


II 

The  Books  on  Our  Missionary  History  Which  Every 

CONGREGATIONALIST  SHOULD  KNOW 

1  Allen,  A.  V.  G.  Jonathan  Edwards.  Boston,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&  Co.,  1890. 

A  judicious,  compact  and  valuable  estimate  of  this  great  leader. 

2  Bacon,  L.  W.  The  Congregationalists.  New  York,  Baker,  1904. 

A  brief  historical  interpretation  of  the  Congregational  order,  omitting  details. 

3  Dunning,  A.  E.  Congregationalists  in  America.  New  York,  Hill, 

1894.  Boston,  Pilgrim  Press,  n.  d. 

An  ample,  detailed,  historical  account  of  our  development  as  a  denomination. 
Very  clear. 

4  Walker,  Williston.  A  History  of  the  Congregational  Churches  in 

the  United  States.  New  York,  Scribner,  1894. 

A  history  which  emphasizes  the  organic  side  of  the  denominational  growth. 

5  Strong,  W.  E.  The  Story  of  the  American  Board.  Boston,  Pilgrim 

Press,  1910. 

An  invaluable,  interpretative  summary  of  the  first  century  of  foreign  missions. 

6  Beard,  A.  F.  A  Crusade  of  Brotherhood.  Boston,  Pilgrim  Press, 

1909. 

A  readable  yet  compelling  interpretation  of  the  significant  data  of  American  Mis¬ 
sionary  Association  history. 

7  Clark,  Joseph  B.  Leavening  the  Nation.  New  York,  Baker  & 

Taylor  Co.,  1903. 

A  fascinating  story  of  the  way  in  which  the  churches  kept  pace  with  the  growth  of 
the  nation. 

8  Ewing,  William.  The  Sunday  School  Century.  Boston,  Pilgrim 

Press,  1918. 

The  story  of  our  denominational  response  to  the  needs  of  our  youth  as  a  part  of 
Sunday-school  progress  in  America. 

9  Sherwood,  J.  M.  Memoirs  of  Rev.  David  Brainerd.  New  York, 

Funk  &  Wagnalls,  1884. 

A  serviceable  and  inexpensive  edition  of  those  quickening  autobiographical  de¬ 
tails  based  upon  the  authoritative  edition  in  1822,  by  Dwight,  of  Edwards’  earlier 
work  of  1749,  with  valuable  added  material. 

10  Creegan,  Charles  C.  Pioneer  Missionaries  of  the  Church.  New 
York,  The  American  Tract  Society,  1903. 

A  group  of  brief  but  stirring  sketches  of  twenty-six  missionaries,  eleven  of  them 
from  American  Congregationalism,  three  representing  British  Congregationalism. 

11”  Richards,  Thomas  C.  Samuel  J.  Mills ,  Missionary  Pathfinder , 
Pioneer  and  Promoter.  Boston,  Pilgrim  Press,  1906. 

A  finely  told  story  of  this  remarkable  life. 

12  Hood,  E.  Lyman.  The  New  West  Education  Commission ,  1880-1893. 

Jacksonville,  Fla.,  H.  W.  B.  Drew  Co.,  1905. 

A  monograph  on  a  unique  chapter  in  the  history  of  American  Congregationalism. 

13  Thompson,  A.  C.  Protestant  Missions:  their  Rise  and  Early  Progress. 

New  York,  Scribner,  1894. 

14  Douglass,  H.  Paul.  Christian  Reconstruction  in  the  South.  Boston, 

Pilgrim  Press,  1919. 

15  Jenkins,  Frank  E.  Anglo-Saxon  Congregationalism  in  the  South. 

Franklin  Turner  Co.,  Atlanta,  1908. 


44 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

26 

27 

28 

29 

30 


N 


MISSIONARY  HISTORY  OF  CONGREGATIONALISM 

• 

Love,  W.  De  Loss.  Samson  Occum  and  the  Christian  Indians  of 
North  America.  Boston,  Pilgrim  Press,  1900. 

A  careful  study  of  the  history  of  the  evangelization  of  the  Indian  tribes. 

Ellis,  George  E.  The  Red  Man  and  the  White  Man  in  North  America. 
Boston,  Little,  Brown  &  Co.,  1882. 

A  clear  account  of  the  religious  work  among  the  Indians. 

Moore,  Edward  C.  The  Spread  of  Christianity  in  the  Modern  World. 
Chicago,  The  University  of  Chicago  Press,  1919. 

A  survey  of  the  modern  missionary  movement  against  the  background  of  history. 

Dyer,  Edward  O.  Gnadensee,  the  Lake  of  Grace.  Boston,  Pilgrim 
Press,  1903. 

The  story  of  the  Moravian  Indian  mission  so  intimately  connected  with  Congrega¬ 
tional  history. 

Capen,  Edward  W.  The  Significance  of  the  Haystack  Centennial. 
Article  in  Bibliotheca  Sacra,  October,  1906. 

A  close  study  of  the  details  of  this  important  episode. 

Anderson,  Rufus.  History  of  the  Missions  of  the  American  Board 
in  India  (1874),  to  Oriental  Churches  (1872),  and  to  the  Sandwich 
Islands  (1870).  Boston,  Congregational  Publishing  Society. 

Three  volumes  by  one  of  our  great  missionary  statesmen. 

Laurie,  T.  The  Ely  Volume.  Boston,  American  Board,  1881. 

The  record  of  the  contributions  of  foreign  missions  to  science  and  human  well-being. 

Clark,  J.  S.  An  Historical  Sketch  of  the  Congregational  Churches  in 
Massachusetts,  1670-1858 .  Boston,  Congregational  Board  of 
Publication,  1858. 

Clark,  George  L.  A  History  of  Connecticut.  New  York,  Putnam, 
1914. 

A  history  which  sets  forth  Connecticut’s  great  share  in  missionary  progress. 

Dyer,  Frances  J.  Looking  Backward  over  Fifty  Years.  An  His¬ 
torical  Sketch  of  the  Woman's  Board  of  Missions.  Published  in 
Life  and  Light,  October,  1917. 

Walker,  Williston.  Ten  New  England  Leaders.  Boston,  Silver, 
Burdett  &  Co.,  1901. 

Typical  Congregationalists,  including  Bradford,  Eliot,  Woods  and  Bacon. 

Faris,  John  T.  Winning  the  Oregon  Country.  New  York,  Missionary 
Education  Movement,  1911. 

The  story  of  Whitman,  Spalding  and  Jason  Lee.  It  takes  a  wider  range  than  Dr. 
Eells  in  Marcus  Whitman,  Pathfinder  and  Patriot. 

Hill,  James  L.  The  Immortal  Seven.  American  Baptist  Publication 
Society,  1913. 

The  story  of  Adoniram  Judson  and  his  associates. 

Thompson,  Charles  L.  The  Religious  Foundations  of  America. 
New  York,  ’  Revell,  1917. 

An  attempt  to  trace  to  their  European  sources  the  principles  which  are  at  the  basis 
of  our  national  life.  Two  fine  chapters  discuss  the  Pilgrim  and  Puritan  contribution. 

Steiner,  Edward  O.  The  Trail  of  the  Immigrant.  New  York,  Revell, 
1906. 

A  picture  of  the  conditions  which  we  must  help  to  meet. 


